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SERMONS.
BY THE LATE
REV. GEORGE COLLYER HARRIS,
PREBENDARY OF EXETER, AND VICAR OF
ST. Luke's, Torquay.
WITH A MEMOIR
BY
CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE.
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1875.
[ The Right of Translation and Reproduction is resei^mh^^OO^Z
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CONTENTS.
* PAt;B
I. WHAT IS GLORY ? I
II. THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD . . II
III. THE DIVINE CHILD .20
IV. THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART 29
V. THE LESSON OF THE STORMS .40
VL THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING ... 52
VII. FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD 62
VIII. THE TEACHING OF SILENCE T]
IX. OUR CITIZENSHIP 90
X. THE DECAY OF FAITH lOO
XI. THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT 112
XIL OUR CALLING 122
XIIL ALMS AND ALMS-BAGS 1 32
XIV. THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION . . .139
a
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Yi CONTENTS.
XV. THE MODERN SPIRIT OF INQUIRY . . . I48
XVI. EATING BREAD IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD . 1 57
XVII. TONGUE OR HEART? 1 64
XVIII. ROOTED IN FAITH 1 72
XIX. JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE 1 82
XX. STEADFAST IN CHARITY I90
XXI. THE SALT OF THE EARTH 200
XXII. SALTED WITH FIRE 2o8
XXIII. SALT IN OURSELVES 2X8
XXIV. THE INEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY . . 229
PORTRAIT OF AUTHOR Frontispiece,
{Copied by permission from a Photograph by Johtk Barraitt
Torquay).
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MEMOIR OF GEORGE COLLYER
HARRIS.
So many sermons are continually brought before the
public that some special cause seems to be needed ,
for the publication of any ne^ ones. But the
preacher of the few here selected was endeared to
so large a number of persons, and his work was in
many ways so remarkable, that it has been felt that
some such memorial could not fail to be valuable to
those who have reason to remember gratefully their
contact with him.
It was in the year 1839, when a boy of five or sue
years old, that George Colly er Harris's home was first
fixed at Torquay.
He was bom at Toronto,, in Upper Canada, but
he never knew the mother that bore him, and from
whom he inherited his gentleness and amiability, for
die died within a few days of his birth.* But firom
* She was Charlotte Anne, third daughter of the late Arch-
deaeon CoUyer, ot Hackfoxd Hall, Norfolk.
a 2
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the age of between three and four years her place was
supplied by the loving care and watchful training of
one to whom was due the early formation of his
character, and whom he loved to the end with the
deepest filial attachment
On the return of the family from Toronto, where
the Rev. Joseph Harris, D.D., had been from 1829 to
1838 the first Principal of Upper Canada College,
established by the then Lieutenant-Governor Sir
John Colbome, afterwards Lord Seaton, he took up
his abode in Torquay.
The exceeding beauty of Torba)^, the spot where
the rocks of Dartmoor run far enough south to reach
the sea, together with the warmth of the climate, had
for a good many years past been raising the original
fishing village of Tor Mohun into a resort of invalids,
and it was scarcely ten years since the brother of the
second Mrs. Harris, the Rev. James Yonge, as
Perpetual Curate of the chapel of St. John, which
had already been built in Torquay to supply the
needs of visitors, had there fulfilled a memorable
ministry, making all the deeper impression because
he combined the earnest vigour then attributed
only to the Evangelical school with soundness and
orthodoxy as a Churchman. He had, too, given
an individual attention to the sick visitors at their
homes such as was not then considered as usual,
and his ministrations were held in grateful memory
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by many a recovered patient and many a bereaved
family.
Other and more present ties combined to attach
Dr. and Mrs. Harris to the spot. They bought a
house then on the outskirts, and in 1848 the vicarage
of Tor Mohun and Cockington was presented to
Dr. Harris.
George Harris, always a bright, eager, conscientious
boy, full of high spirits, but always trustworthy,
obedient and reverent, had gone to school first at
Exmouth, under the kind and appreciative care of the
Rev. J. Penrose, and was transferred from thence to
Harrow, then under Dr. Vaughan, in both places gain-
ing warm approbation from his masters and deep affec-
tion from his school-fellows, some of whom felt their
association with him to have been happy for their
principles. His health was never of the robust kind
that could bear a great strain, and thus he never at-
tained very marked distinction during his educational
course, though he never failed to acquit himself with
credit, and to win high esteem.
In 1852 he went to Exeter College, Oxford, and
thus came under the influence of Dr. William Sewell,
to whom he always felt that he owed very much. His
mind had from the first been bent upon the ministry,
but with the simplicity and earnestness that made the
choice a joy to him, not a reason for any of the
unnatural gravity with which young candidates are
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sometimes reproached. His nature was eminently
lively and sociable, full of mirth and playfulness, with
keen intellectual curiosity and strong appreciation of
beauty of all kinds, and all who recollect him must
connect him with whatever was pleasant and joyous —
ever the most eager in all innocent amusements, and
with an unfailing fund of drollery which put every
little incident in a witty or grotesque light
When his Oxford course was finished he went for a
year to reside at Islip with the Rev. M. B. F. B.
Lightfoot, under whose instruction and guidance he
threw himself earnestly into such parochial work as a
layman could undertake while reading in preparation
for Holy Orders.
Mr. Lightfoot writes, " How thoroughly and de-
servedly did he win the love of all who came in his
way. He did everything with all his might, and yet he
acted with so much temper and judgment that there
could be no misunderstanding of a word that he said."
After leaving Mr. Lightfoot he arranged to under-
take a curacy under the Rev. Charles E. Kennaway,
then vicar of Chipping Campden, and there too he
worked for a time as a lay helper. Mr. Kennaway
writes, "I remember well the youthful appearance
and the beautiful freshness of his whole look and
demeanour when he first, with his blue tie and strip-
ling's gait, carried on his work. When the time
arrived and he entered on the solemnities of the
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ministerial character, I need not say how in the
old village town of Campden he concentrated hk
enei^es." He was ordained deacon in 1357, and
priest in 1858. Towards the end di his two years
at Campden he was called away to Torquay by a
very severe and protracted illness of his father, during
which he made up his mind that his assistance was
essential at home, so that he resigned his curacy
at Chipping Campden and was licensed as assistant
curate at Tor Mohun.
All this time Torquay had been in a state <^ rapid
growth. A city of villas was rising on the slopes of
broken ground, space being made and materials pro-
cured by the blasting away of the limestone rock,
while the requirements of the addition^ inhabitants
Attracted a large population of tradespeople, and, of
course, likewise of poor.
Church room was a necessity. The old mother
church of Tor Mohun, though carefully restored and
fitted, could not be enlarged. It is one of the t3rpical
Devonshire churches, perpendicular in architecture,
with a square battlenwsnted tower, and is besides so
closely hemmed in with graves that expansion was
impossible. Numerous churches had sprung up in
the district around, representing many shades of
doctrine, but these chiefly accommodated the visitors
and the villa population, while the original fishing
inhabitants, who had formed the nucleus, as well as
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the commercial portion of the town, still could only
belong to the parent church, and the resort of the
• rich to the constantiy-arising buildings could not but
squeeze them out of it.
Whatever a well-worked parish machinery could
effect by organizing district-visitors, setting all the
willing to work under supervision, was already in
hand when George Harris came on the scene as
curate.
There are many difficulties in the way of a young
clergyman working in the home of his youth to set
against the advantage of his familiar knowledge of
the locality, especially when he becomes curate to
his own father. It is hardly possible that, in the
course of his clerical education, he should not have
acquired ideas that are not those with which his
elders started in life. Each cannot help being a man
of his own time, and this is very apt to result
either in disloyalty, or in dutiful patience sinking
with time into slackness.
Happy the father and son who can live and work
together in such deep inner sympathy, that forbear-
ance on both sides is no slackening of energy, and
the ardour of youth is tempered by the wisdom of
elder years, not restrained and embittered.
I On his first return, while still young, George Harris
I was content to be an obedient but active element in
I the existing system, working eagerly at the schools,
i
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and among the poor, and doing his utmost to reach
that difficult class, the young men and lads.
For their sakes he set on foot a Mutual Improve-
ment Society on certain evenings in the week, with
readings, lectures, games at chess or draughts, and
innocent recreations. I remember his satisfaction at
finding that he could learn short-hand from one of
the young men, not from any special value for the
accomplishment, but that they might not feel that
the improvement was all on one side.
The Society had a good many fluctuations. The
younger members had a tendency to be unruly, and to
interfere with such of their elders as had improvement
and not amusement in view, and there was so much
that was experimental about it that it was always
undergoing reformations and restorations ; but a good
many interesting lectures were given there, when able
visitors were pressed into the service, and it had the
highly important effect of bringing about intercourse
between the clergy and a most difficult class.
The great influence lay, however, in George Harris's
own character and temperament. He seems to me to
have had the nature that is always said to produce
eloquence ; namely, intense sensitiveness even to the
pitch of nervous excitement, so that everything,
whether of pleasure or pain went twice as far with
him and into him as with any one else. A grand view,
a beautiful picture, a fine piece of music, nay, any
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innocent game afforded him energetic enjoyment such
as colder dispositions can hardly understand.
I have seen him come in tired from a long day's
parish work and hang over a vase of fresh roses as if
every breath brought exquisite life and refreshment ;
and though I have lionized the fine ecclesiastical arclu-
lecture of my own neighbourhood with numerous friendt,
his intensity of appreciation and determination to see
and know the very utmost about them, as well as his
genial manner with their custodians, are always my
prominent associations.
All this threw him into sympathy with large varieties
of people. Everybody's heart was drawn to him by
finding how much pleasure he received, and withal
there was an unusual frankness and unreserve, which
never shrank from addressing any one, or entering into
conversation with those whom his bright face and
smile had attracted.
With all this capacity for enjoyment there was quite
as strong a power of indignation and suffering. He
felt all trials with proportionate keenness, was out-
spoken whenever there was occasion, was fretted and
irritated at all slackness, and in fact the simile of the
sharp sword wearing away the scabbard was never more
appropriate than in his case.
But in the fresh spring of early youth, ere the
physical frame had begun to suffer from the demands
made on it, the effect was great attractiveness and
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popularity. Though his compositions at school aini
college bad never attained the first rank, his gifts as
a preacher stood very high ; countenance and manner
making quite as much impression as the free flow of
wofds.
Tor church was filled to overflowing, and it became
doubly needful to raise funds for a daughter, which was
not to be separated from the parent, but to be under
the charge of Dr. Harris and his curates, so that the
alms of the wealthy might not be cut off from the
poor, but that they might continue to form one
parish.
For several years this object was steadfastly worked
at. Contributions were solicited from friends, and the
offertory on Sunday afternoons was always given to
the fund for the intended church. It was curious to
observe that whereas the winter and especially the
Lent collections often comprised notes and coins of
value from rich visitors, the summer and autumn ones
were of much smaller sums, but far more in number,
showing that the poor thronged in when the space was
left for them, and were anxious for a church of their
own.
S. Luke's Church was at length begun on the least
expensive of the plans offered, an original and peculiar
one, adapted to the site, which was a ridge on the
side of a steep hill, then fast being quarried away
behind it Looking down upon Tor road and on the
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beautiful bay, it was charmingly placed, and the
sweeping blasts from the sea were guarded against by
the arrangements of the porches at the two angles of
the west front.
In the meantime, Mr. Harris was gathering a
congregation for it for a whole year, in a poor quar-
ter of the town, near the rising edifice, so that there
were many ready and happy to take possession when
S. Luke's was consecrated as a chapel of ease on the
4th of November 1862, by Bishop Aubrey Spenser, the
retired Bishop of Jamaica. The aged Bishop Phillpotts
was unable to leave the house so late in the year,
although when summer came round again, he made
a great effort, and on one memorable Sunday morning
his frail bending figure, with the black velvet skull cap
over his scanty white hair, came through the vestry
into the chancel. He was a little overwhelmed by
the enthusiasm of the very numerous voluntary choir,
for the boys, most of them tradesmen's sons, sang at
the utmost power of their lungs in his honour, but he
was highly satisfied with all he saw.
Necessity had caused the expenses of the clergy of
S. Luke's to be chiefly dependent on pew rents. The
plan was adopted with regret, and rendered as little
objectionable as possible by making the free seats
occupy the whole length of the nave, and be in every
respect as comfortable and well situated as the rented
ones. Moreover it was thought that with a stranger
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congregation, of whom many were sure to be in such
health that without security of a place church-going
would be impossible, it was doing no wrong to let such
security be paid for, provided the poor residents did
not suffer.
Of course the heartiness and beauty of the services
and the popularity of the sermons caused many of
the free seats to be occupied by visitors, but on the
whole the plan has worked well.
Old Tor church had for a long time past offered
weekly Celebrations and daily services, and S. Luke's,
varying the hours, increased the facilities for attend-
ance. The early and late Celebrations were alternate
at the two churches, this being especially needful in
a congregatioh 'where so many were invalids or re-
quired extra care. S. Luke's also, besides the after-
noon service, had a 7 p.m. Sunday evensong, specially
brilliant and joyous, and always a great resort.
Few who heard the preachings there could remain
ignorant of the calls on either purse, time,- or both,
on behalf of their neighbours, and those who under-
took to act as Sunday-school teachers were, according
to the already established custom at the mother parish,
collected once a week and personally instructed by
Mr. Harris, a habit which is happily more and more
adopted as people are becoming more sensible of the
utter ignorance of many kind volunteers, and their
need of being shown both what and how to teach.
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One notable sermon, afterwards printed under the
title of " Where are the Men ? " was a heart-stirring
appeal to the male part of the congregation not to
be so much slacker than the women in the fulfilment
of their Christian obligations. " Can it be, as is saixi,
alas ! of a neighbouring land, that her women are
devotees and her men are atheists? God forbid!
Can it be that for weak women the task is easier —
the road of God*s commandments smoother and
straighter? In them does faith shine clearer, or
love bum more brightly ? Shame on us, my brothers,
if it is so ; and for it we must find an answer. Do
Mre find it in the excuse, so often alleged, that time
is the great drawback; that business employments,
or the fatigues of labour, engage us so much — ^the
aflEsurs of the world, in great or small ; the destiny oC
nations, or the management of a trade, requires so
much attention, or involves so much companionship
with sin, that it is impossible for those so occupied to
think about religion, except at a distance, or to fit
themselves for its requirements ? Brethren, we should
think that a sarcasm if it came from an enemy and
not fi'om our own lips !
" What other reason can we look for ? Shall we
say that no thought of religion occurs at all; that
Christ's commands are slighted. His dying love for-
gotten ? Ko ; 1 will not be so imjust ; I know that \%
not the case. \ know many an instance of difiiculty
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and opposition, real and painful, where th/e young are
barowbeaten by the older, where loss of place, loss of
livelihood, loss of favour would be, or »eems as if iit
would be,, the consequence of a firm sliaml against
pi^ular and convenient sins. I know that oftentimes
when the business of the day is over, prolonged by
some special circumstances far beyond its appointed
limits, the weary one returns,, his head distracted and
his heart distressed, not by the press of labour^ but by
uncongenial companions, and by the unvarying stream
of chilling slight and ridicule with which religious
subjects have been treated.^
" And has he dared as a child of God, remembering
whose he is, and whom he serves, to lift up the standard
of the Cross, to speak a word for his Saviour and his
Church ? Then what a pitiless fire of abuse and ridicule
<^[)ened upon him ! The oaths and the profane jest
and the unclean word pollute the very atmosphere he
bveathes, and fain would drown the gentle sounds of
the Spirit's voice within. What wonder then, my
frkmds, that the home is sought with aching, wandering
keart, as well as weary limbs and head ;. that the din
(^ sinfiil passions roused, the hideous vision of unholy
tfrings suggested, occupy and baffle the senses, and a
ps^erless night succeeds to a graceless day; and
each d^ brings its heavier weight and its sadder story,
while Satan calmly watches and sees the impressions
<Bi£ good wiped slowly and surely out from the youj;]^
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heart. Desires for holiness and the love of Christ
shine less and less upon the soul. Good thoughts
come rarely now, and with less power each time ; the
Bible gives little help, for its advice is seldom asked ;
God answers but seldom, for He is seldom addressed
in prayer ; church becomes at best a matter of form ;
religion something for the easy-going and comfort-
able, but a matter which is out of the question for
those who have their bread to earn and their places
to keep.
" That I believe is, poorly expressed, the history of
the non-attendance ^of our men at the Holy Commu-
nion. The circumstances in which they live, the
example of the office or the workshop, seem so
unsuited to the holy thoughts of that particular part
of the worship of Christ, that the idea is given up of
seeking God's help in the Blessed Sacrament, which
He has provided to strengthen our souls."
To strengthen those whose needs and trials were
such as are here described, Mr. Harris was mainly
instrumental in establishing the Tor and S. Luke's
Communicants' Union, an association consisting of
male communicants of the two churches of Tor and
S. Luke's. The rules bind the members to undertake
some specified works of piety and charity as each may
choose, and a monthly evening meeting is held under
the presidency of the clergy, alternately in the two
parishes, at which non-controversial papers are read on
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a previously-announced subject, after which friendly
discussion is invited.
The vigorous energetic life and devotion of the
whole work struck every one. After a stay at Torquay
in 1864, Mr. Keble remarked on the congregation at
S. Luke's as the most reverent and attentive he had
ever seen, observing especially on their use of their
Bibles in following some lectures that were then being
given — I believe, those on the life of S. Peter, which
were afterwards separately published.
There was some amount of danger to so young a
man in the great popularity George Harris enjoyed,
which gave him a great following of the young and
enthusiastic, who would go anywhere to hear him,
and would, or thought they would, do anything al
his bidding.
I think the way he passed through this peril was
partly through the straightforward simplicity that
hardly perceived the pinnacle he was placed on in
some minds, and when the manifestations came before
him was merely amused by them ; and partly in the
ardour with which his mind was fixed on the spiritual
welfare of the parish. The rich might run after him,
but it was the poor that he ran after.
In the year 1865 the aged Bishop Phillpotts made
Mr. Harris a prebendary of Exeter Cathedral, in
recognition of his active services to the Church, and
in the spring of the same year he married. His
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wife, the second daughter of the late Hon. F. W,
Primrose, was henceforth, through health and sickness,
the devoted sharer in his joys and sorrows of home
and of parish.
In 1869, the district of S, Luke's was formed, in-
cluding a portion of the mother parish, with a con-
siderable addition of the poorest and worst quarter of
the adjoining parish of Upton, by name Pimlico. Mr.
Harris thus became an independent incumbent, though
the close union continued between the two churches
of the father and son, who thoroughly understood
how to maintain " unity without imiformity." A
very large additional vestry was built on to S. Luke's
church in order to have a room available for the
meetings of Sunday-school teachers, communicants'
classes, and the like. One great effect of such a
ministry was to form fellow-workers, and among his
parishioners many excellent plans were carried out,
not of his devising, but fostered, if not inspired, by the
spirit of the place. No xmdertaking was more suc-
cessful than that set on foot in Pimlico, where a
former coal store was fitted up as a mission chapel,
and rendered wonderfully church-like by illuminated
texts and flowers. The Rev. H. M. Patch, one of the
S. Luke's curates, took this place under his special
charge, and collected not only crowded congregations
of listeners, but a large proportion of communicants
at the early Celebrations, which had been begun in
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doubt whether a sufficient number of persons could
be gathered at them.
After fresh considerations had resulted in the
conviction that all attempts to enlarge old Tor
church were futile, Mn Harris purchased, as a
thank-offering, and conveyed to the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners, a site in the parish for another church
which might accommodate the ever-growing number
of parishioners, and while waiting for funds for a
suitable permanent building, his father erected, with
the help of friends, on a part of this site, the
temporary church which has been of increasing use
for more than six years.
Meantime the decoration of S. Luke's was a great
object with its vicar, and under his inspiring calls,
the congregation greatly beautified it The apsidal
chancel, whose ribs had been too much like the
degrees on a globe, was adorned with frescoes, and
everything was done to give it beauty and dignity.
Great pains were taken with the music, and the whole
of the services were of the choicest type of thorough
Anglicanism. The choristers and other boys of the
tradesmen class were provided with an excellent
school, which Mr. Harris much wished to have
endowed with scholarships for the choir boys, so that
they might be continually under the eye of the clergy.
He was also much in requisition as a preacher on
all occasions in the churches around. The sermons
b 2
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that were the most felt at the moment were generally
extempore, so that no adequate idea can be given of
them, but, as will be seen from those here published,
the general characteristic was a picturesque descrip-
tion, a dwelling on some incident in every one's mind,
or the like, and then an application full of incisive,
unsparing home truth, as when he told his congre-
gation that no injunction of our Lord seemed to be
better obeyed than that which bids us not appear
unto men to fast
" The Lessons of the Storm," preached immediately
after that fearful tempest in January 1866, is one of
the most striking specimens of his manner of dwelling
on recent events. His funeral sermon on Bishop
Phillpotts was also very effective, but it has seemed
best to take the sermons that are of more universal
application rather than those of the time and place.
All this work could not but tell severely on a frame
that had never been of the strongest, and which by
reason of its very energy and sensitiveness, suffered
more than others both from rebuffs and disappoint-
ments, yes, and from its strong sympathies. For he
felt with and for the many sick of all ranks who
claimed his ministry, and whose bereaved friends
remember his brotherly consolations.
I saw him at long intervals only, but on terms of
such intimacy that I could trace how the buoyant
joyous optimism of early youth sobered and saddened
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down, with no decrease of energy, but with much
diminution of sense of success and hopefuhiess of
results.
Every Lent " took a great deal out of him," as the
saying is, and each year it became an increasing
anxiety whether he would hold out to the end or
require rest before Easter, though his enjoyment
of any change was sure to be a stimulus that
renovated him, and the readiness of his powers was
remarkable. When requested to preach at one of the
evening services at S. Paul's, he went to London with
carefully-prepared notes, but when he found himself in
the pulpit, he could not lay his hand on them, they
were nowhere about him. He described afterwards
how he beheld the sea of faces below him, and felt for
a moment as if he were punished for his presumption,
then knelt and prayed for help.
He found that he remembered the text and the
opening sentence; he went on fluently and never
hesitated for a word, nor did his hearers discover that
he had suffered any unexpected loss, but only knew
that they had heard an admirable sermon. He
found the notes on the vestry table.
Anything changing the routine of his daily work
refreshed him, and the holidays, spent abroad, or with
kind friends in Wales, were an ever-recurring delight.
The Church Congress at Southampton gave me my
last sight of him. He was thoroughly happy, throwing
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MEMOIR,
himself into each subject with all his natural ardour,
delighted at meeting old friends and making new
ones, and gathering up fresh ideas every moment.
Our long drives to and fro with a congenial party of
friends, and the merry, though tired evenings after-
wards, were full of charms. He only spoke once on
middle-class education, the subject which at that time
was one of the foremost in his mind.
We parted after the Bishop of Peterborough's
sermon in Winchester Cathedral, making an appoint-
ment to meet again at the ensuing Congress at
Nottingham. I could not keep it, but George Harris
was there, and spoke in defence of the union of
Church and State. His health had even then begun
to give way, though he had been struggling on all the
autumn not to lay aside his work. He had curates
enough not to feel the services in themselves a great
exertion, but the harass of the constant appeals to him
as vicar, the care of all his various works, the
disappointments in experiments, the difficulties with
individuals, and the summonses to all the sick or
afflicted, were a burthen that no one could lighten, and
in this sinking physical condition so depressed his
spirits that the only chance of recovery was in absence
from home.
In November therefore he went with his wife and
children to Ventnor, where he had the great pleasure
of meeting Dr. William Sewell, and reviving old
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''^T"
MEMOIR,
associations ; but in January a heavy blow fell on him
in the death of his eldest child, a beautiful and
promising boy of five years old, after a fortnight's
illness. The little fellow was buried at Torquay, with
strongest demonstrations of affection and sympathy
from all who remembered his bright eyes and engaging
ways. The feeling towards him and the parents found
expression in the gift of a stained glass window for
S. Luke's Church, as the form of sympathy sure to
be most acceptable to one who so loved the building
itself.
After this sad homeward journey, Mr. and Mrs.
Harris went to St. Leonard's, and while there went
over to Brighton, intending only to spend the Sunday
with a friend, but on the Satiu*day night of their
arrival Mr. Harris had an attack of hemorrhage from
the lungs, which recurred so severely the day after as
to occasion great alarm, and cause his parents to
hurry from Torquay.
However, there was after a time sufficient rally to
allow of a return to Torquay, where esteem and
affection for him were so strong that even in the
dissenting chapels prayers had been offered on his
behalf.
That summer, in the sight of work from which he
was forced to abstain, and of anxieties for half-ripened
undertakings, was a very trying one, and it was well
when it was ended, and he was sent to the south of
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MEMOIR,
France for the winter. The benefit of the change to
Mentone was great, and in the ensuing months much
health and strength were recovered, ^so that George
Harris came home in the spring apparently a wonder-
ful instance of recovery. He was able to resume
some of his work, though with caution, and there
were fair hopes that another winter abroad would
restore him to full vigour.
Even then he offered to resign the living, in case
he should never be equal to the full work, but Bishop
Temple begged him to continue to be the head of all
that was done there, and he retmned to Mentone still
vicar of S. Luke's.
But the disease resumed its progress. The late
autumn of 1873 was less healthy than usual in the
south, and he lost ground rapidly. His last Celebra-
tion was in the little church of S. John's at Mentone,
and from the beginning of 1874, he sank rapidly,
suffering as much in spirits as in body, not only from
the longing to see his parents and his children again,
but from the depression consequent on the malady,
and the disappointment of relinquishing work half-way.
The kind medical friend of the family ' who had
known him from childhood, but had of late retired
from practice, undertook to go out to Mentone to
bring him home as soon as March was over, and the
anxious journey was completed on the 9th of April.
« B. Toogood, Esq.
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wm
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When he arrived at Torquay he insisted on walking
into the drawing-room at his father's house, that he
might thus lessen the shock of the first aspect of his
debilitated condition, but he was then carried up stairs
to the rooms he was never to leave again.
He was, however, perfectly happy and thankful.
All the clouds were gone, and the rest and relief of
having reached his beloved earthly home were the
foretaste of the rest and joy that remaineth for the
people of God. He was continually repeating to
himself Psalms. He had known the whole book of
Psalms perfectly from the time he was a very young
child, and had often expressed his gratitude for having
been made so familiar with them that they always
came to his aid in health or in sickness. His last
audible words indeed were, " Though I walk through
the vaUey of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil :
for Thou art with me ; Thy rod and staff comfort me."
So in peace, on the early morning of the 4th of
May 1874, the spirit of this good and faithful servant
was recalled by the Great Master, on whose work he
had spent his whole self.
His forty years seem to our eyes a brief span, but
can we call such a departure untimely when we look
at the work he has done and the mark he has left ?
Would not many of twice his years be thankful to
have effected what was compressed into seventeen
years of ministry?
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MEMOIR.
A few of his sermons are here collected, partly as a
memorial to those who knew and loved him, partly in
the .hope that they may convey the same thoughts to
others, although the impression he has left was far
more due to what he was in himself than to his
spoken words.
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SERMONS.
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T.
WHAT IS GLORY?
2 Cor. xi. 30.
If I must needs glory ^ I will glory of the things which concern
mine infirmities,
" Doubtless it is liot expedient for me to glory," says
S. Paul : and yet never did there live a man who
had more of which he might have boasted. A long
descent, whose ancestral dignity the Jew looked upon
with something less of family than of religious pride ;
a civil station inherited riot bought, which gave him
the franchise of the greatest of earthly nations;
brilliant talents and a philosophic mind cultivated by
the care of the wisest teacher of his people; a
prominent part in the political world, won by his
ability at an unusually early age : all this added to
boldness, zeal and perseverance, made him a marked
man of his day; and in the peculiar crisis of his
nation's history in which he lived must have drawn
men's eyes to him as one qualified for some great
thing — the one man, if there were any, who might have
guided the public mind and headed some popular
movement, which, if successful, would have rescued
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2 WHA T IS GLOR V? [i.
his nation from their subjection to the Roman power
and placed them at his feet as their deliverer; or
which, animated and sustained by his wisdom and
address, and not deserted by him even in disaster,
would have given him a name of glory and a place
in the history of the world. This was no contempt-
ible stake for an ambitious mind to play for, and
much there was, as men would say, to glory in, in the
gifts that qualified him for it. But this was past, the
temptation of the world was departed. Never do we
hear by a single syllable in Holy Writ any allusion to
what he might have been as a hero among men. Yet
still there is opening for a fall, for glory, for pride.
He who tempted our Lord with all the kingdoms of
the world and the glory of them, and failed, tempted
Him next to over-confidence and the perils of
spiritual pride. So again this same tempter, from
whose toils Saul the statesman was escaped, has yet
dangers with which to incircle Paul the Apostle.
The Apostle of the Gentiles — he who preached the
Word more abundantly than they all, he to whom
more than once a special revelation of Christ was
vouchsafed, he who, as he had previously profited in
the Jews' religion above many that were his equals —
was afterwards fulfilling day by day the declaration of
God that he was a chosen vessel unto Him, as the
bearer of the Gospel before kings and princes ; and
far away among the Gentiles, the worker of miracles,
the raiser of the dead, the founder of Churches, the
rebuker of them that blasphemed, gloried not in the
triumphs he had won, nor in the result of his
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I.] WHAT IS GLORY i 3
labours. He speaks of himself as one bom out of
due season ; he perpetuates the disparaging accounts
of his personal appearance and his defective voice ;
he refuses the homage of idolaters, and rebukes those
who would make him a leader among Christians;
and when he cannot but record the facts of his
ministry and the things he has done, he adds em-
phatically, " Yet not I, but the grace of God which
dwelleth in me." We nowhere find him puffed up
by his spiritual greatness, any more than we can
detect one lingering backward look to the brilliant
earthly career which was gone from him for ever.
And yet he does glory. He cannot help himself.
He is one of those ardent souls whose energy is
always finding utterance in noble deeds and honest
words. And he knows that God has employed him
marvellously in carrying on this great work on earth.
But he will even here act as he has bidden others
act. " He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.'*
The first declaration — that God had so pre-eminently
chosen him — was followed immediately by the reve-
lation of how great things he must suffer for His
name's sake. And side by side with the triumphs of
his zeal and the splendours of the victories of the
Cross, there travels the shadow of suffering, of per-
secution, of bodily infirmity, of disappointment, of
humiliation. These last he takes, and in them he
glories. " If I must needs gloiy, I will glory of the
things which concern mine infirmities." When he bids
others follow him as he follows Christ, he does not
forget, for himself or them, that Christ's was a lot of
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4 WHA T IS GLOR Y? [i.
suffering. When he glories in the faith and patience
of the Thessalonian Church under their persecutions
and tribulation, it is no loud vaunt for them in a trial
from which he shrinks himself When in later days he
bade S. Timothy endure hardness as a good soldier of
the Cross of Christ, he did not speak with Pharisaic
hypocrisy laying on him a burden which he would not
touch himself. Through all his converted life he fought
the good fight of faith, though he did not glory in it
till life was almost over. He takes the scorn and the
contempt of men, he takes the imprisonment and degra-
dation to which the service of Christ had exposed
him, and he wraps them round himself as something
more than a conqueror's robe ; and, reflecting on the
sufferings and the shame of Christ, he glories in
afflictions, in persecutions, in imprisonments ; nay, to
sum up all in one word, he glories in the Cross of
Christ. And sometimes the fire is hot within him,
and he must speak with his tongue ; and glorious
visions unveil these heavenly scenes before him, and
heavenly words which no human lips may utter ring
on his raptured ears, and he must tell his fellow-
labourers and fellow-sinners what wonderful things
have been shown him by the God of his salvation.
Then, as the shadow of the brightness, he tells of
his infirmities — the lengthened persecution of Satan,
the long-unanswered prayer, the thorn in the flesh
as the corrective of the revelations of the Spirit, the
ignominious flight of one let down in a basket from
the walls of Damascus fleeing for his life, as the
counterpart to him who was caught up to the seventh
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I.] WHAT IS GLORY ? 5
heaven. It is not expedient for him to glory. And
yet glory he will, glory in all his infirmities ; for he
has visions and revelations of the Lord more than
another; and the more he meditates on his own in-
firmity, the more reason he has to extol the good-
ness of the Lord who heaps such distinctions upon
him.
" If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things
which concern mine infirmities.^* How many of us,
dear brethren, can honestly say that ? What need is
there to speak with apprehension and warning of a
difierent sort of glorying? There is a time that
comes to certain sinners, ay, and in some ways a
fearfully early time, when shame turns to glory — when
it is no longer suffering for Christ's sake the humilia-
tion, the desertion, the isolation among men on ac-
count of religious principles fearlessly maintained, that
is the cause of a holy gladness ; but there is a time
when men learn to glory in their sin. It is true that
very often the particular sin is robbed of its true
ng,me before it receives its new dignity. There is
something rough and harsh about the plain unvarnished
description of it, and it must be smoothed down and
receive the polished gloss of its worldly acceptation.
A little skilful manipulation will do this. A lie is a
very awkward word ; liar is a term hardly ever heard
among polished society ; but smoothed down, modified,
it becomes the neat excuse, or the cunning subterfuge,
or the skilful evasion. And are these unknown among
us ? and if known, are they in the Sight of a God of
truth anything else but falsehoods ? and are they not
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6 WffA T IS GLOR Y? [i.
often made the means not only of helping oneself,
but of injuring a neighbour ; and provided they be
but employed cleverly or expressed brilliantly, are
there not plenty who will admire and applaud, until
the unhappy perpetrator takes a pride in his per-
formances and glories in his shame ? So too in pro-
fanity, how often is it thought manly among the young
to swear, till they do it out of bravado; actually
showing ofif their sin to the astonished delight of
companions wickeder or weaker than themselves.
Again, is it right to spend all we conveniently can — not
to speak of spending what we cannot because we
have it not — upon our own enjoyment, in disregard of
the claims of our neighbour and our God? Yet,
what is the inward consciousness of delight with
which the rich man contemplates the magnificence, or
the pretentious man the fine appearances, that wake
up the homage or the flattery of others, but pride and
self-indulgence united, and a glorying in that which
pampers self, while it leaves in many a place the poor
to starve or the work of God to languish ? Again, as
regards that whole class of sins which offend against
chastity and modesty. Is there no such thing as glory-
ing in them ? At any rate they have the way prepared
for them in a large part of the literature of the day.
Even if the glory of a so-called heroism be not
thrown over those who openly violate the sanctity of
marriage, or scorn the notion of feminine purity,
still so boastfully is vice made to lift its head, so
artfiilly and so suggestively is a prurient fancy in-
fluenced and excited, and so greedily are books and
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I.] IVHA T IS GLORY f 7
periodicals of this kind devoured, and so truly — alas !
and so readily — are the realities of these fictions to
be found in the world, that we cannot but feel here
again that the shame which ought to hang around the
very thought of such things as these has given way to
glorying in hearing of them, reading of them, speak-
ing of them, sometimes even not stopping short of
doing them.
At any rate, if I have coloured the picture too highly
for some to gaze on, few will fail to recognise the
converse ; if I am wrong — and would that I might be
proved so 1 — in saying that there is such a thing as
making a boast of sin, at any rate no one can hope to
succeed in showing that there is no such thing as
making a reproach of religion. If villain be not an
accepted title of honour, saint is recognised as a
sneer ; the conscientious are put down as " over par-
ticular,*' those who can blush at an obscene word or a
suspicious jest are stigmatized as prudes. Yet, " I pro-
mise to renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps
of the world, the sinful lusts of the flesh," are words
not unknown to us ; it is fair to assume that that pro-
mise has been made or is about to be made by every
one here present. Can any of us apply the same prin-
ciple to the breaking of a promise, and find some
glowing name for that, and glory in the thought that
each misdeed Ihey do is not only wrong in itself but
is adding sin to sin ?
But, brethren, the thought that neither the splendour
of a career of earthly greatness, nor the possession of
brilliant talents, nor the attainment of exaJted piety,
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8 WHA T IS GLOR Y? [i.
nor the bold defiance of God's laws, is matter for us
to glory in, is specially brought before us now. The
world has been keeping gay holiday for some time
past. To-day a different note is sounded ; and thankful
we well may be that here even the world takes some
notice of the warning of the season of Lent It is
at least a tribute of outward decency if the mere form
of her gaieties are changed, as I believe they almost
universally are. But we would fain hope that to
many an anxious heart, to many a simple heart, to
many a weary and unsatisfied heart, the call of Lent
comes with an echo of that loving Voice that spoke
so long ago, " Come ye yourselves apart into a desert
place, and rest a while."
What have you been glorying in ? Brilliant gaiety ?
the deepest draughts of pleasure? the victories of
beauty or of wit ? What remains ? A faded wreath,
a jaded body, a weary mind. Has the brilliancy of the
draught been heightened by some strong colouring of
sin ? The draught has got lower in the cup, it is fiat,
it is little else but a sediment now, and that is bitter ;
but it is the very sin which sparkled so just now. Has
a darker spell and a bolder choice of deliberate sin
thrown its arms around you ? Be sure your sin will
find you out — most fearfully as you hide it most from
your God. Or have you prided yourself on your
superiority to these things and those who do them ?
Even so your glorying is not good. Come, one and
all, and listen one moment, and you shall see not only
what an Apostle boasts of, but why he does so, and
where true glory waits you. All of whom we have
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I.] WHA T IS GLORY? 9
been speaking have gloried in something in which at
the time they thought they were succeeding or would
succeed. The Apostle's glorying was in his failures in
all earthly hopes.
With us,
** That bitter sigh was all for earth —
For glories gone and vanished mirth ; "
with him earth had nothing to offer which he did not
consider loss in comparison with Christ The marks
of distinction of which he boasted were the marks of
the ownership of Christ. And the Church's object in
Lent is to bring you to the same mind as his ; to lead
you willingly to give up for a while many things in
which there is no actual harm, and everything in which
there is — to call you to hear our Lord saying in to-
day's Gospel, " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem," and to
induce you to start with Him. Bring all whom we
have been speaking of, bring the things we have men-
tioned — bring your goodness, bring your badness ; let
us weigh it by the Cross, let us measure it by the
Cross, and then let us set out on the journey. At the
outset we shall find how utterly destitute we are of any-
thing in which to glory. Our very goodness, Christ died
that // might not be our bane ; our badness, where shall
we find the depth to which it depresses the scale?
The thought of ai crucified Lord, of a persecuted
Lord, brought to us frequently in the solitude of Lent,
with conscience during a period of unwonted quiet
gaining a hearing and reasoning with us, this will show
us the true value of the things in which we have been
too apt to glory hitherto. Oh, turn not away ! Are
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lo IVffA T IS GLOR VP [i.
. you conscious of sin committed ? and ts it a weary
burden to you? Come, and in solemn humiliation own
your sin and obtain your promised pardon. Are you
conscious of a life idled, dreamed, or trifled away ?
Come, and be woke up to reality as you see in the
sufferings of Christ the value of your souls, which you
were paying as the price of your indolence. Have
you tried — are you trying still ? The sufferings of Christ
shall show you how much He loves you ; how certain
He is to bear with your shortcomings, to supply all
that is wanting in you. Come from your business,
when the toils of the day are over, for prayer, and
devotion, and rest. Come in the day-time, you who
can, and rescue some of its precious hours from the
stream of little circumstances that hurry them so fast
away; come, and draw step by step nearer to the
Cross, till you see and know Him who hangs upon it,
and have grace to take up your own ; and the more
you learn of Him and of yourself, the more will you
glory in the things which concern your infirmities, in
the help which strengthens them, in the grace which
supplies these needs ; in the Love which was so con-
cerned with them that It took them up Itself; bore
them as your sympathizing Friend on earth; bore
them, with all their acciunulated sins, as your Saviour
on the Cross ; bore them away for ever — and having
borne your shame, oflfers you His glory.
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IT.
THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD.
S. Luke iv. 27.
Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet ;
and none of them was cleansed^ saving Naaman the Syrian,
Many and great are the difficulties which beset the
Mission cause ; many and great too are the difficulties
which surround the whole question : so many and so
great, that there are not wanting times when we are
tempted to feel that the whole work is a mistake, the
energy spent upon it wasted, the prospect hopeless,
the labour unprofitable, the appeal for its support one
that ought never to be made. We look abroad over
the face of the earth, and though we see our Church
planted wherever the sun shines, we hear accounts on
the other hand of the failure of religious efforts to
produce any wide result Our Missionaries penetrate
the most desolate continents, they navigate the most
unfrequented streams, they open communications with
the most savage races, they make themselves under-
stood to men of other tongues. Yet we are challenged
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12 THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD, [ii.
to say where, over the whole wide world, can you find
a spot in which heathenism under our modern Mis-
sionary enterprises has really retired before Christi-
anity, and government and people have united in a
national conversion ? The Church, they say, is planted ;
but where is the proof of its taking root, and growing,
and gathering the nations under the shadow of its
branches? These are serious questions, but they are
fair ones ; yet it is not for me to deal with them. I am
not standing here to-day to narrate details, or to give
results.
Another class of difficulties and objections, how-
ever, arises. The appeal for foreign Missions is
often met with the reply, "There is too much to
be done at home ; wait till we are Christian people
in England before we attempt to evangelize the
others ; " in fact, in other words, the very proverb
which our Blessed Lord puts into the mouth of those
who quarrelled with His teaching is repeated now to
His followers ; and those who would tread in His foot-
steps, and "preach the kingdom of God to other
cities also," are met with the reproachful answer,
" Physician, heal thyself."
Those, I say, who are treading in His very footsteps.
For in spite of all difficulties, it is the truth that foreign
Missions are the work of the Church, and that we are
untrue to Christ our great Example, untrue to our own
commission ^nd position as a city set on a hill which
cannot be hid, if we flinch from the conviction, and the
duty consequent on that conviction, that Christ's life
and death were not for one nation only, but for the
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II.] THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD, 13
benefit of the whole world ; that the Gentiles may be
fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of
the promises of Christ by the Gospel . . . and that
it is our duty and our privilege to help to make all
men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which
from the beginning of the world hath been hid in
God.
Now what is the example of Christ in this matter ?
He went about doing good, and healing all that were
oppressed with the devil. He was sent, He tells us,
first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Still
that did not prevent His entering upon the coasts of
Tyre and Sidon, from healing the Syrophenician's
daughter, or from counting it the special hour of His
glorification on earth when the representatives of
Gentile Greece desired to see Him in the temple.
And what He did in act. He defended in words. He
did not stay among His own people ; He came unto
them, and they received Him not. Then He went to
other cities and villages,. and at last returned to His
own city, Nazareth. In the synagogue, on the Sabbath
Day, He taught the people : from the roll of the prophet
Esaias, He explains the object of the Gospel teach-
ing, and tells His countrymen that now no longer are
these glorious things at a distance ; the real Advent has
dawned, and the Voice that is then ringing in their
ears is teaching with authority, and offering in all
sincerity the things which Esaias had seen only
through the vista of ages. And as He spoke the hearts
of men were softened, and perhaps they wished that
He would always stay with them, and that they might
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14 THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD. [H.
pass the rest of their lives lulled into the slumber of
content by the music of a Voice that told them such
heavenly promises. But Christ's preaching was to
arouse, not to soothe to slumber ; to stir up to holy
faith and noble self-denial, not to leave in mere
wonder or passive admiration. And therefore He
startles them, He shows them His knowledge of their
hearts ; He shows them that all their jealousy of
others, all this hatred of Himself, is plain to His
all-searching glance. He knew that they were envious
because they had heard what He had done at Caper-
naum, and desired that He should spend, and be
spent, entirely for them. But this was not His object
on earth, nor was it the purpose of God's dealing.
He takes them back in thought to the ages long ago :
He calls up to them the memory of the two greatest
prophets that had ever lived and worked in that holy
land. Those who had opened and shut heaven by
their prayers, who had warred with idolatry, had
hurled the enemies of Gk)d to destruction, and had
called the dead to life — ^^what message had God spoken
to them ? " Many widows were in Israel in the days of
Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and
six months, when great famine was throughout all the
land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save
unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was
a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time
of Eliseus ; but none of them was cleansed, saving
Naaman the Syrian." In the days of famine and
want, when the people of God were starving, when
the rain came not down from heaven, and the bread
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II.] THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD, 15
was short by reason of scarceness, when the prophet
of God received from his Master the power to main-
tain one family throughout those days of gloom, it was
not to Bethlehem's royal city, nor to Jerusalem the
Mount of God, nor to Jacob's ancient house at
Sychem, nor to the sacred precincts of Gilgal, nor
the once holy shrine of Shiloh, but to the frontier of
idolatrous Sidon, to the little town of Sarepta, to a
widow woman there : though many a tale of sore dis-
tress was still crying aloud for relief from many a deso-
late home of Israel And not merely the desolate home
and the empty store are made to teach their lessons,
but the awful mjrster)- of sin in the parable of leprosy
is introduced in Elisha's days. In his time there was
many a leper, dying by the living death of his foul
disease ; many a one of God's own chosen people,
cut off from his brethren unclean and hopeless, rais-
ing the sad and melancholy cry as he hurried away
from home, and brethren, and friends, to hide his
misery in the presence of those who like himself were
banished from their fellow-men. But not to these
was Elisha sent But one comes to him, the represen-
tative of an idolatrous power, high in position among
the enemies of Israel, and to him the prophet
administered the cure which could come from none
but God. And, brethren, apply the lesson as our
Lord applied it at Nazareth. Learn that His good-
ness, and His teaching, and His grace are not the
property of one town, nay, nor of one nation, nor of
one age: and stay not to extend those blessings to
others, because round your own hearthstone or within
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i6 THE TRUMPET A T HOME AND ABROAD, [ii.
the compass of your own land there are spiritual
wants still unsatisfied. The cry of starving multitudes
of our own land is no reason why we should not help,
if we are able, others who are starving too ; and the
wider the cry of misery, the more open-handed should
our assistance be : and take the matter as referring
not to bodily things, but spiritual souls starving.
True, there are millions in this land, millions of
heathen, but we shall not help them by refusing aid
abroad. Gospel help, and the distribution of our
substance in God's service, does not injure the giver ;
It is like the light of a lamp ; light as many candles as
you will from one lamp — the light is diffused and multi-
plied, but the original light is just as full and strong.
And though multitudes are starving from want of the
bread of heaven — though Home Missions are crying
to us with a power of appeal that breathes the tone
of necessity rather than of entreaty ; still remember
how God sent the prophet to the Sidonian widow,
though the mothers of Israel were starving; and
remember how she in her patient faith gave first to
the prophet's wants or even God suppUed her own.
And what though the leprosy of sin be raging among
us — sin, great, deep, black, multitudinous national sin,
in drunkenness and infidelity, in sense and reason —
though individual hearts scarce keep to themselves
the knowledge of their personal iniquity, and many
a whited sepulchre stalks among us at noonday,
covering a mass of corruption — the cherished deeds
of darkness, the sensualistic secret sin, the hypocrite's
worldliness or malice, the crowd's shame of Christ
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IL] THE TRUMPET A T HOME AND ABROAD, 17
and fear of men — srill, across the waters of the earth,
from England's distant colonies, from mountain and
island, from wood and stream, from city and desert,
there comes the cry, " Oh, give as it has been given to
you : bring us to Christ, who by His touch can heal
the leper — by the Incarnation restores the nature of
sinful, fallen man."
But, brethren, I should not be honest if I pretended
to think that the question as to the result of Mission
work, or the comparative claims of heathenism at
home, really was the cause of the limited support
doled out to Mission work. The real causes are far
more numerous : they are as numerous as we are our-
selves, for they are ourselves. Look back at Him
who spoke in the text, who told us that God cares
for all His children, though they may be our enemies.
Look at His example. He was the true, the perfect
Missionary, and he denied Himself Self asked Him
for ease, rest, retirement, popular applause, the delights
of temporal power. He denied Self, and redeemed
the world. Look at His followers, the great human
Missionaries — the Apostles and their followers: Self
made the same request to them, asked them to spare
themselves, to value their citizenship, their safety,
their fortune, their lives; but they loved not their
lives unto the death, they denied themselves, and they
evangelized a world. And, brethren, shall we say that
when the Gospel-trump is blown, when we are called
to rally round Christ's standard to do what we can
for Christ, that Self is silent and says nothing to freeze
our hearts and tie up our purses? or if Self does make
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i8 THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD, [ii.
the request, is it denied ? Have we endured hardness
for the sake of extending Christ's Church among those
who as yet do not know Him? And, to bring the
matter still nearer home — and do let it apply to all
classes of those who hear me, in these days of high
wages and good clothing, as well as in these days of
developed taste, imported luxury, lavish expenditure,
I ask you all to bear with me — what sacrifice do you
make for the cause of Christ compared with any other
cause? Does all your religious expenditure, asked,
entreated as it is, equal what you spend on the
delicacies of the table, on works of art, on showy
dress? Think, to bring the matter, I say, nearer
home at the present day — think of what we heard a
few months ago from New Zealand ; think of what
we are hearing at this very time from Jamaica. I am
not going to speak of what it may be premature on
our part to pronounce any judgment on at all — the
conduct of those in great danger and difficulty ; but
think of those whom the Church still finds her glorious
martyr-children; think of those, bone of your bone
and flesh of your flesh, cruelly murdered by an
infuriated mob ; think of the patient Missionar}% and
the noble Christian lady his wife, who go where the
ashes of rebellion are still red-hot, and, trusting their
all in the hands of God, sit down to work for Him
amid desolated plains and ruined homes, with outrage
on one side, severity on the other, kindling the hottest
animosity in savage hearts ; with England left behind,
comfort foregone ; death, and that a barbarous death,
staring them in the face, the messengers of the Cross
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iLl THE TRUMPET AT HOME AND ABROAD, 19
of Christ still trust to His name of power, His word
of promise, and venture wherever they see His foot-
steps. And now, when Christmas time draws near,
and many a happy party in om: English homes gathers
the separated family together, and pure social joy gives
no unholy reflection of the Love of God for His great
family, shall we not think of them that are far away,
those that sit in darkness and the shadow of death —
those to whom Christmas brings no message of a
Saviour bom, nor Christianity the knowledge of true
social joy — of the heathen that have not known God,
and of those that labour among them, that bear the
burden and heat of the day while we are at home,
but who crave for our sympathy, and may be helped
to victory by our support ?
c 2
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III.
THE DIVINE CHILD.
Isaiah ix. 6.
Unto us a child is bonty unto us a Son is given.
The child of the blessed Virgin Mary, the Son of
the Almighty and Everlasting God, is He of whom
the prophet sings. A child, yet bearing on His brow
the stamp of Majesty and the impress of Omniscient
thought : an infant, on whose shoulders rest the
government of all worlds : a Son, one with the
Father of all light and life : just bom in Bethlehem,
but yet the Ancient of Days ; come to bring a sword
upon the earth ; to divide families ; to lead multitudes
to sorrow, to poverty, to persecution and to death ;
and yet the Prince of Peace : set for the fall, but also
for the rising again, of many in Israel. But all these
contrasts, and all that the most fertile imagination
could conceive or the strongest words embody, come to
nothing, if we once can bring ourselves to realize the
one fact, declared in one of the names of the Child
bom to-day, Emmanuel, God with us, that "God
was made man." In this short sentence of short
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III.] THE DIVINE CHILD. 21
words lies the greatest of mysteries. Oh, brethren,
in these days of noisy common sense and practical
explaining away of everything, do not be offended
at my pressing this word upon you ; and do not
think that I am trying to put together fine-sounding
periods ; but let me ask you to dwell upon the word,
and upon the thought, and upon what it contains
and what it involves as the great question of this,
rather, of all ages — the great concern of your, own
personal existence. For do not let the hearty warmth
of Christmas merriment ; the time-honoured joy, the
holy festivity of social gathering which this season
authorizes, drive away the thought of this solemn
revelation : and do not say, with the ascetic or with
- the irreligious, that the two are incompatible, when
you have the highest and the lowest united, and
both glorified, in the doctrine of the day.
God was made man. A child was bom, a Son was
given. The desire of all nations was fulfilled. For
truly there is in all nations and in all religions a
testimony to this, that man requires the doctrine of
the Incarnation, Whether it be the mysterious union
of the spiritual and the material in ourselves, in our
own body and soul ; whether it be a deep inexplicable
longing in the purest, truest, part of our being, deep
down in our souls ; below the surface of our common
life, whilst the storms of passion or of outward cir-
cumstance seem to move us — as men say that deep
under the ocean waves "the storms that lash its
surface into billows are unfelt " — there is and has been
over all the world, in nearly every form of religion,
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22 THE DIVINE CHILD, [in.
and even with more strange vitality in courses of life
where religion, as we term it, is unknown, a longing
for a union between man's nature and the object of
its worship ; both to be absorbed into that higher
nature (if there be any), and to have that nature
brought down to earth and manifest in the flesh. I
need not, brethren, lingier over proofs of this in de-
tails of heathen worship from India to Italy ; though
any one who has drunk but ever so slightly at the
fountains of classical knowledge can tell how every
beauty of nature has been ascribed to the handiwork
of the gods and associated with their delight; how
every great advance in the arts, both that support and
that humanize mankind, are attributed to celestial
sympathy with man ; how every great discovery of
ancient date whose origin would at all be wrapped in
antiquity, every alleviation of human woe, every
addition to internal glory or success, was attributed
to an auspicious deity; and in times of wonderful
deliverance the cry woidd rise from all the voices of
heathendom, " The gods are come down to us in the
likeness of men." But leaving the Greek to thank
Oljrmpus for husbandry and power over the brute
creation, and Rome to build her temples to the twin
brethren who bore her arms and won her battles,
we may find the idea of Incarnation associated with
the object of worship in a province that brings the
matter nearer by degrees to ourselves. Take any
idea which becomes a ruling principle ip the world.
It must have its incarnation. Let it be the idea of
power : let C^sar form a pyramid with the world for
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III.] THE DIVINE CHILD, 23
its basis, and Nero for its apex, still that Nero becomes
the incarnation of that idea, and men, dazzled with
earthly splendour and awed by temporal greatness,
fall down and worship the man in whom that power
is centred. Or let that power claim a different sphere
and a more tremendous jurisdiction, and let its empire
be over the souls of men ; religious tyranny and an
ecclesiastical dominion cannot remain a bare idea,
but is embodied again in a divinely-commissioned in-
fallible man set unblushingly in the place of God on
earth. And oh, horrible thought for this blessed day
of pure and loving memories, if human passions, and
unearthly craft, and exotic devotion, and obstinate
coldness of heart, are to be woven together to form a
system by which men who need a Saviour may be led
blindfold to pass Him by, and transfer their love,
their allegiance, their worship, to what they are told
is a more gentle bosom, a more patient advocacy, a
more perfect sympathy; then the purest name ever
worn by one of earth's daughters is degraded to this
unholy use, and Mary is made the Incarnation of
power over Man and God.
And even many who scorn to do homage in any of
these ways, still have a deity on whose incarnation
they insist ; and finding an object to which must be
devoted all consideration, all fondness, all deference —
in whose wisdom they see no cause for doubt, for whose
comfort no sacrifice is to be denied, with whose feeling
no consideration is to cross, to whose advancement
every energy is to be devoted — they make that object
ncamate in themselves.
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24 THE DIVINE CHILD, [m.
Now, it is to satisfy that true craving after a real
boon, however warped or blinded it may be through
human weakness — the craving after an Incarnate deity
— ^and at the,same time to condemn most severely and
resist uncompromisingly the incarnation of selfishness,
that the doctrine of Christmas Day directs itself.
" Unto us a Son is given.'* That Son is God.
God through the ages had been speaking to His
people by His servants the prophets. But there had
been always something between. Though righteous-
ness and judgment were and always shall be the
habitation of His seat, still clouds and darkness were
round about Him. Out of the darkness He spoke
from Sinai's top, and even on the mercy-seat His
presence was in a cloud. His justice and His mercy
met together, but it was under typical sacrifices and
ceremonies : and though He left not Himself without
witness, still man knew not yet the power of faith,
and failed to pierce the veil : but at last He resolved
to speak face to face with His creature. From the
habitation of His dwelling He considered all them
that dwell on earth, and He determined in the Person
of His Eternal Son to visit the earth and bless it.
He came. We know how. It is the story that we
loved to learn in our childhood — it is the Bible
Lesson that never wearies — how, when Mary and her
husband went like all others to their own city to be
taxed in the reign of Caesar Augustus, Christ was
bom in Bethlehem. I say we know how. But how
utterly untrue that is. We may look upon the story
and read it : we may pictiure the details : but we see
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III.] THE DIVINE CHILD, 25
no further than the swaddHng clothes and the manger.
To outward sight an infant such as we may see any
day, if only we go sufficiently among the poor and
despised; yet an Angel announced that birth from
Heaven, and angelic choirs sang in exultant joy over
the message that he gave.
Can you accept the Lesson of Faith? Can you
kneel in thought before that manger, and as you
see your own nature lying there in its most helpless
stage, can you believe that it is the very God ? Can
you take the teaching of the Epistle and the Gospel
for to-day, which tell us that Christ then bom, then
an Infant, is the brightness of the Father's glory, and
the express image of His Person? that that is the
word or reason of the Father, there taking the man-
hood into itself, and being made flesh? that there
the yearning of all human nature is satisfied, in that
now, He, whom having not seen yet we love, the
invisible God, is made manifest? and that from
henceforth no human need can be felt, no temptation
experienced, but God from His own personal know-
ledge can sympathize with it? It is needful on
Christmas Day to dwell on the Godhead of Christ.
Without careful thought of that, we cannot at all
estimate what Christmas says to us. But passing on
from that, and drawing our dazzled gaze back from
the glory which pierces through, then let us think
of the lessons taught by that Child who is bom.
Another birth in a poor cottage ; will that shake the
world? An infant round whose cradle shines no
rank ; a youth on whose growing mind no appliances
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26 7 HE DIVINE CHILD, [lii.
of costly education expend themselves ; a young man
with no store of money, no shelter of patronage;
whose days are ended at an early age by an igno-
minious death: a cradle ruder than that of the
poorest cottager; a home shared with the beasts of
the field ; a mother poor, and unable to purchase the
common comforts of life for her Child or for herself.
Oh, come, ambition ; come, lust and avarice ; come,
pride and anger ; come, vanity and meanness ; come,
cruelty and self-indulgence — come and gaze upon
that manger and that Child. See when God chooses
to be man what sort of man He chooses to be. It
is not merely, if I may use the expression, to bring
Himself to a level with earth's least and worst, but
it is to set us an example — to say to us, by the thriUing
eloquence of deeds, " Seekest thou great things for
thyself? Seek them not!** to supply the original
of His own illustration, when He called a little child
unto Him, and set him in the midst and said, " Of
such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
Even the moral lesson is almost overpowering. Be-
fore an earthly child, those who are not hardened
will check, or at least veil, their sinful propensities ;
before this Child siu-ely all rude rough words, all
angry strife, all coarse expressions, all impure feeling,
must be checked But the inner spiritual lesson is
greater still. Not only does the Child Christ, the
Example, speak to us firom the manger of Bethlehem,
but renovated human nature looks up, and lifts up
its head as its redemption draws nigh, brought in by
that new-bom Babe ; and God, made manifest in the
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III.] THE DIVINE CHILD, 27
flesh, takes the manhood into Himself, and imparts
the Divine nature to us ; and henceforth every Christ-
ian heart becomes a cradle where Jesus will love to
rest " My little children, of whom I travail in birth
a second time till Christ be found in you,'* says
St Paul ; and teaches us that Christ, who abhorred
not the Virgin's womb, and refused not the resting-
place of the beasts of the stall, will be content to
cradle Himself, even among the angry passions, the
wayward feelmgs, the coarse bad thoughts, that throng
around these hearts of ours; but cradhng Himself
there, he will transform us by His own wondrous
growth. " Unto us a Child is bom, unto us a Son is
given," wakes up a thought of thankfulness for a new
birth in ourselves, a new creature foimd in us, Christ
in us the hope of glory ; and each day of new desires
and holier aims, and deeper insight into the things
of God — each day, when we are content to choose
the poor, and the little thought of, and the lightly
esteemed, so it be pure, and lowly, and innocent, be-
comes a day of spiritual birth in our hearts. Nor
is the Angels' song wanting to hymn this nativity;
only, like the majestic mountains which are reflected
in some blue lake, the marvel is inverted; and the
field where the Angels sing is the Eden above, and
the pastoral heart that is gladdened is the heart of
the Good Shepherd, of Christ Himself, as He hears
the Angels round the throne of God rejoicing over
one sinner that repenteth. Oh! joy then for the
news of Christmas mom ; joy for the coming of the
Prince of Peace; joy for a world redeemed; joy on
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28 THE DIVINE CHILD, [iii.
earth which the Angels lead : joy for this ; but joy
too, in Heaven and earth, for each soul new-bom in
the Baptismal birth ; joy for each good desire grow-
ing in the heart ; joy in heaven for the birth of Christ
in the hearts of His people. And all the visions of
prophecy shall be fulfilled by the power of the Child
bom at Bethlehem ; opposing interests united, angry
feelings tamed, old quarrels made up, old sins re-
pented of ; the rich and the poor, the weak and the
strong, the wise and the ignorant, the holy and the
fallen, all bowing together before that lowly manger,
linked in the bond of a common love, for One that
is born for them all, and an all-embracing charity for
all whom He loves. For " the wolf also shall dwell
with the lamb, and the leopard shall He down with
the kid ; and the calf, and the young lion, and the
failing together, and a little child shall lead them."
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i
IV.
THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART.
S. John xiv. 22.
Lord, how is it thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not
unto the world ?
It is a question that a child might ask, and very
likely it has been asked often. " How is it that the
wise men from the East saw the Star which told them
of Christ's birth, and no one else ? " They left their
own country; they came a long and perilous jour-
ney; they must have made great preparations for the
journey itself, and the costly gifts they brought ; the
discovery which led to their departure was made in
the pursuit of the favourite science of their nation ;
and many must have been as well informed as they,
and as much interested in the object of their search.
Yet when the prophecy was fulfilled which we read
yesterday — " The Lord shall arise upon thee, and His
glory shall be seen on thee, and the Gentiles shall
come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy
rising " — it was not by the thronging multitudes con-
verging to the holy manger, as the centre of world-
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30 THE DA Y'STAR IN THE HEART, [iv.
wide pilgrimages, it was by a representative few, who
had seen one vision, or made one discovery, and came
out of the " darkness which covered the earth," follow-
ing the one light they had, in simple faith, wherever it
might lead them. Whatever the answer to this child's
question may be, let us for a few minutes dwell upon
the facts; remembering they are facts set before us
by the Evangelist. Some time soon after our Saviour's
birth, at any rate within the space of two years, these
wise men from the East arrived in Jerusalem. How
many they were, or what their rank, we are not told,
further than that evidently they were wealthy ; and
all we know from Holy Writ or elsewhere of the
class of persons to which they belonged, tells us they
came probably from the land of the Chaldseans.
What we do know is this. They arrived in Jerusalem,
and startled the whole city with one question which
they asked, " Where is He that is bom King of the
Jews? for," they added, "we have seen His Star in
the East, and are come to worship Him." If it has
been a wonder already that more representatives did
not come from far, and more from the ends of the
earth, called by the heaven-appearing messenger, it
must have been greater marvel still to these simple-
minded men to find even in Jerusalem the "gross
darkness" which had covered their own people.
" Herod was astonished, and all Jerusalem with him."
The great council of the nation was hastily convened ;
those Scriptures of ancient prophecy, which Herod
probably had consulted but little heretofore, are ap-
pealed to and examined ; the prophet Micah is found
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IV.] THE DAY'STAR IN THE HEART. 31
to speak, and Bethlehem, the city of Israel's royal line,
is found once more to be chosen as the shelter of a
monarch's birth. Herod's hypocrisy we know; his
ignorance he confesses ; the wise men, wiser in their
simple faith than in all their scientific lore, set out once
more ; and leaving the angry king, and the bewildered
council, they start on their short night ride to Bethle-
hem ; and as they journey southward, the Star which
they saw in the East went before them, and came
and stood over the place where the young Child was.
When they saw the Star they rejoiced with exceeding
great joy. Here we must leave them for a time,
while we inquire a little more into the circumstances
that brought them. A star ! They were astrologers,
persons who searched the heavens, not merely to
learn what the heavenly bodies are, and how they
move, but to learn also what superstition said they
showed mankind about things to come. At this time,
then, people would natiually be most earnest in their
search for anything the heavens might show. For
well we may believe that Balaam's sad though glowing
prophecy was well remembered in the East — that
great calm treasure-house of all bygone knowledge —
when he said, " Behold, there shall come a Star out of
Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel." And
then in later days, when Israel dwelt in captivity, and
David and his fellows were enrolled among the
Chaldaeans and astrologers of the day, that the Jewish
sacred books would be searched, and Daniel's own
predictions be carefully treasured. And so it would
come to pass that — Balaam giving them a sign, and
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32 THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART, [iv.
Daniel fixing an epoch, and the whole Eastern world
in the hush of expectation stimulating their exer-
tions — these wise men from the East would, from some
plot of rising ground on the midnight watch-tower of
some rocky height, be straining their eyes into the
distant sky for token of the coming Great One. And
at any rate attention is challenged by the recorded
fact, that just about the time of our Saviour's birth
there did appear a great sight in heaven, and that
this sight — the conjunction of two great planets — was
one which occurred but rarely, and was regarded by
the class to which this revelation, be it what it might,
was made, as the intimation of the birth of one of the
great ones of the world ; and this conjunction of
Jupiter and Saturn appeared twice that year, once
in the end of May and once in the early part of
November. They saw the appearance, whatever it
was ; they started, and after they started they lost
sight of the Star. But it appeared to them again just
as they left Jerusalem. The journey from Babylon to
Jerusalem took Ezra, with the royal help and com-
mendation of Artaxerxes, four months. Allowing for a
starting-point somewhat further east, and a journey
made under less advantageous cicumstances than that
of Ezra, we shall fill up the five months between the
first and the last appearances of this conjunction. I
say, at any rate the coincidence is sufficiently near
to be remarkable ; and if that be the real meaning of
the Star, we have the twofold le*sson of God making
His revelation to these people as they were diligently
occupied, according to their light, about their usual and
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IV.] THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART, 33
proper calling ; and also how God chooses the foolish
things of this world, yea, things which in themselves
are of no account, to bring about His great designs,
even as in the beginning He caused the light to shine
out of darkness, and made the world out of nothing.
Thus too it would come to pass that others would
know nothing of the great event portended : they
might perhaps notice a peculiarly large star, but they
would understand nothing of the rarity of the com-
bination which produced the appearance, and woiild
think no more about it. Knowledge, diligence,
and love, were three great qualities in those wise men,
the absence of which in others left them isolated, first
in their scientific labours, and then alone in their pious
journey. Knowledge, diligence, and love, would also
have prevented Herod from being frightened, and all
Jerusalem from being troubled, if they had been ap-
plied in the search and study of that other heavenly
star, even the sure word of prophecy, which, as a
light shining in a dark place, was in the keeping of
those Scribes who were startled into activity by the
Gentiles' search for the Messiah.
But if this possible question as to the small number
of those who came at the first Epiphany to see the
Christ may draw out some thoughts of God*s love in
revealing His will, and the way in which many
neglected it, and failed to receive even the direct
manifestation of the Son of God ; what thoughts will
arise in regard to S. Jude's question, asked so many-
years after, and recorded in the text, " Lord, how is it
Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not untp the
D
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34 THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART, [iv.
world?'' Thirty years and more had passed since
the Magi camev to Bethlehem, and Christ had left
the quiet shelter of His childhood's home, and all His
nation had heard of Him, and some believed on Him,
and some rejected Him ; but all in some way or other
considered Him ; and now after all this. He declares
that He will manifest Himself to some ; not to all.
The Star shone in the heavens, and the heavens are
spread forth over the earth, yet but few saw the Star,
or followed its blessed guiding. And the Son of God
Himself, the bright and Momii^ Star, nay, the Son of
Righteousness Himself, rose on His people with healing
on His wings ; but His own received Him not — only
some comparatively few to whom He gave the power
to become the sons of God. And he tells the reason
to His faithful apostle, and declares who they are to
whom He will manifest Himself — ^those whom He and
His Father love, they who love Him, And evermore,
unceasingly, there is an Epiphany, Christ manifesting
Himself, and yet not regarded : a greater than the
prophet declaring, "All day long have I stretched
forth my hands," even from the Cross itself, "to a
disobedient and gainsaying people," all through the
ages, " the light shining in darkness, and the darkness
comprehending it not."
How is it indeed that the eternal Light does not
manifest itself unto the world ? Is it because know-
ledge is increased, and the love of many has therefore
waxed cold ? that knowledge which consists in turning
the back upon the light, and studying the projection
of our own dark shadows cast upon that which shines
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IV.] THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART, 35
with the reflection from it all around, and which would
be all bright if we would only look towards the light
instead of away from it. The sun shines in the
heavens, but for those who shut their eyes, or those
who have none, he shines in vain. And the spiritually
blind may be busy with their own imaginations : as
the blind man with the world which his own fancy
. composes out of the relics of long past memories and
the, to him, obscure allusions in the things which he
hears from others ; he may be busy in evolving out of
his own consciousness laws of thought, conditions of
matter, and the necessities of a universe, and, per-
haps, among these last, the existence and description of
a God ; and all the while he smiles in calm contempt
of those who obey the teaching of what he calls
superstition, and follow the guiding-star of God's
revelation of Himself, and despises the earnestness
and would discourage the proceedings of "those who
cry out of tlie fulness of their heart, as they journey
over life's rough ways, " Oh, send out^Thylight and Thy
truth, that they may lead me and bring me unto Thy
holy hill, and to Thy dwelling ; and that I may go
unto the Altar of God, even the God of my joy and
gladness ! " And these are they who are not far off, in
the dark places of the earth, but who live in the very
midst of Christian light and opportunities ; with the
oracles of God in the midst of them — with knowledge,
intellect, education; who doubt or disbelieve themselves
in the interests of sovereign reason, and cast difficulties
in the way of others ; who, it, as philanthropists, they
would not send to Bethlehem to destroy Christ, would
D 2
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36 THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART, [iv.
not, on the other hand, seek, as Theophilus, to know
the certainty of those things in which they have been
instructed, but would search the Scriptures to expunge
from them all that testifies of Christ as God. Were
they not, in their generation, suth as these of whom
Christ said, " But now ye say, We see ; therefore your
sin remaineth " ?
But again, there are others in the world to whom
Christ manifests not Himself ; others in whom the
manifestation of the truth does not commend itself
to their consciences in the sight of God ; to whom the
Gospel is hid because the God of this world hath
blinded the eyes of them that believe not ; who do
not so much turn their back upon the light to gaze on
their own shadows, as fix their glance upon a false
light, lurid and glaring, more like the lightning in its
short-lived flashing splendour than the steady gleam
of day. They see all that attracts solely in and for
this world ; they see the Pride of life, and bow at his
haughty throne ; they see the kindling brilliance of
success and the sparkling smile of society : they look
upon the stream of pleasure, and see, as they think, the
sunshine of delight in its many twinkling ripples; and
they turn for a moment, and see, I will not say the
squalor of poverty or the darkened chamber of sick-
ness, but they see the peaceful glow of home affections
and the cheering brightness of a happy quiet life where
Christ is truly loved, and that is dull and monotonous
to them. And little duties come before them, but they
thrust them aside, though they may be spurning a
cross ; and self-denial invites them, but they will have
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IV.] THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART, 37
none of it ; and Christ calls to them through their
conscience, and they look for a moment ; but to go to
Him would be to give up much that they lik,e now,
so they hide as it were their faces from Him. He is
despised, and they esteem Him not
But, oh, for those whom either reason or sense
ensnares — for those who can not and for those who will
not see their Saviour now — there is yet an Epiphany,
when " every eye beholds Him," when they that pierced
Him shall look upon Him, when they who knew of
that Star, and followed not its guidance, shall have the
blackness of darkness for ever : when those who saw
no beauty in Him that they should desire Him, shall
long for Him in vain ; then will be the fulfilment of
that half threat, half prophecy, which conscience
utters in the hour of its rejected and defeated efforts^
" I shall see Him, but not now ; I shall behold Him;
but not nigh."
But, dear brethren, let us to-day with more thankful
thoughts remember that there is always an Epiphany
of Christ to us Gentiles. Jesus Christ is evidently
set forth crucified among you in the preaching of His
Word, in the ministry of His Sacraments. And be-
sides this, there is a quiet, silent Epiphany of Him in
your hearts. Is He a stranger there, dear brethren ?
do you not know Him ? Never mind what others may
say, or what others may neglect ; keep the precious
treasure of the knowledge of Him. The very thought
of Him is a mighty protection against many an
insidious sin. The quiet thought which comes to you
when you are alone, when you are kneeling at your
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38 THE DAY-STAR IN THE HEART, [iv.
private prayers, or lying ajvrake at night. The quiet
thought which comes when you are sick and sorrowing,
and the world and your companions are away from you.
Darkness has come over you, even some great grief,
turning your day into night ; then do not the stars
begin to shine forth — soft, silent thoughts of comfort,
as messages from God, still, gentle guides to lead you
to His presence ? Christ is very near at those times.
He is softening your heart, for He works quietly, that
love may presently grow up in you — that love which is
necessary to obtain a glimpse of Him here. And
what a transformation wherever that love beams upon
the soul ! what a power of motive, what a store of
perseverance ! The wise men whom we left in their
joy, after recognising the Star that had brought them
so far, standing over where the young Child was,
hastened at once to His presence. In lowly adoration
they bow before that Infant form : in deed devotion
they offer to Him all their choicest store. The royal
tribute of precious gold, the sacred offering of sweet
incense, the pure and mystic myrrh, typical of Christ's
and the Christian's purity, and suffering even unto
death, and preservation from it. These they strewed
upon the cottage floor.
What have we done? How have we expressed
our gratitude for this manifestation or revelation
of Christ to us? Have we given our best? — the
first-fruits of our time, the tithe of our substance ?
Or are we content to give up the hour in which we
have nothing else to do — the coin which remains
in our pockets when we have spent all we can
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IV.] THE DA Y'STAR IN THE HEART 39
upon our own convenience — the duty which does
not interfere with our gratification of ourselves ? No,
brethren; with this New Year before us, with God's
grace dealing with us in acts of the greatest mercy and
the most solemn warning, let us aim at a holier rule of
life than we have ever done before ; let us give what
we owe to God and man— and that is love ; and the
Star which guides us now, the light of revealed truth,
shall be our faithful guide to the presence of Jesus
here, and hereafter to that blest land which has need
neither of Star, nor of the Sun, nor Moon, to shine in
it : for the Glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb
is the Light thereof.
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THE LESSON OF THE STORMS.'
S. Luke xvii. 26—30.
As it wets in the days of Noe, so shall U be also in the days
of the Sonmof man.
They did eat, they drank, they married wives ^ they were given in
marriage^ until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the
flood came, and destroyed them all.
Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot ; they did eat, they
drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded ; but
the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and
brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them ail.
Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is
revealed.
The thought of the coming of the Son of Man, in
this passage, comes pressed upon us with the weight
of a suggestive incident, in that the thought, though
not the words, formed the text of the last accents of
exhortation which sounded in our Bay before the
great storm of Wednesday week. The men who
heard it were all saved; but with what feelings must
the news of the coming of Christ ever ring in their
ears ? — held as they seemed to be by an Almighty arm
over the very brink of the grave into which others
' A Sermon preached at S. Luke's Church, Torquay, on
Sunday Morning, January 21st, 1866.
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v.] THE LESSON OF THE STORMS, 41
were hurled around them; and then placed upon
their feet again, bidden by God's providence to go
home to their friends and "show how great things
God had done for them."
And I would, dear brethren, that this thought might
come to you, too, with all the solemn impressiveness
of the occasion, which has stirred us all so deeply for
the last ten days. Before that occasion passes, before
the tide of time and circumstances efface the inscrip-
tion on the sand of our memory, let us deepen the
impression on our hearts, and "hearken what the
Lord God would say concerning us."
It is not the language of metaphor to say that we
have been as those who have watched, or might have
watched, the gathering of a terrific cloud which has at
last enveloped us and burst over the midst of us.
For how many months past is it, that we have never
found men meet in any numbers for any time, witliout
questions as to §ome great calamity raging or threaten-
ing? — for how many months past have the public
journals of contemporary history vied with the
popular literature of fiction in the horrors that they
describe or predict ? The new year dawned, and the
joy with which we hailed it shone, like the cold
influence of a stray sunbeam that pierces the cloud
for a moment and scarcely lights up the wave where
the sea-bird sits swinging with the long heavy swell
amid the relics of wreck and disaster. It seemed as
if God's " four sore judgments : the sword, and the
famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence,"
were amongst us; as our cattle languish round us,
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42 THE LESSON OF THE STORMS. [r.
and the staflf of our food is broken ; and from both
the ends of the earth war and sedition clamour for
blood j and close at home the pestilence, which winter
seemed to check for a moment, is ^waiting on the
nearest shores, threatening to come to us with the
coming spring. And still we sat at home, and talked,
and wondered; and some would pray, and some would
scoff, and some would say that the wave of civilization
and improvement, and advanced science, which has
borne us on its crest so proudly thus far, will lift us
over each coming difficulty, and our own arm and
our own precautions shall be all the safeguard that we
need. And then — to complete the picture of desola-
tion — suddenly, in an instant, when men were saying
peace, and were thanking God for the smoothness of
the waters, and for the prospect of rest, there burst up-
on us here such a gale — ^such a succession of storms
— as none living can remember in its violence and
duration. Is it not a time of solemn things and
thoughts? Does it not lead us to enter into the
spirit of Jeremiah's prophecy, when he mourned for
his land — when he said, "For the mountains will I
take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habita-
tions of the wilderness a lamentation, because they
are burned up, so that none can pass through them ;
neither can men hear the voice of the cattle ; both
the fowl of- the heavens and the beast are fled ; they
are gone"?— And more truly still does the note of a
yet more awful prophecy chime in with our present
feeling, as we think of the " distress of nations, with
perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's
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v.] THE LESSON OF THE STORMS. 43
hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after
those things that are coming upon the earth."
But yet, brethren, till within the last ten days, how
little have most of us realized that anything ex-
traordinary has been going on around us. We have
read the accounts, and we have pitied those that
have suffered ; but it is only indirectly that we have
felt what has been going on. We have lived us usual;
we have been like the inhabitants of Babylon when
"the city was taken at one end;" we have been
busy about our common lives, and common objects,
our too common and too engrossing pleasure and
business; feasting and rejoicing, while calamity was
actually in the midst of us. We have been, as the
inhabitants of the earth in the days of Noe, while
the months of respite were growing fewer and fewer ;
we have been as the men of Sodom, while the fiery
storm of God's wrath was preparing against them;
we have been as men will be to the end, till the very
moment when the Son of Man comes once more ; till
the hour when He shall find us at the evening, or at
midnight, or at the cock-crowing, just employed as
the fashion of the day commands, or our own wills
dictate. As it was in the days of Noe, as it was in
the days of Sodom, so wiU it be at the coming of the
Son of Man ; so it is now, while God is still warning
us, pleading with us, waiting for us ; men eat, they
drink, they marry wives, they are given in marriage ;
they buy, they sell, they plant, they build, as if they
thought " their houses should continue for ever, and
their dwelling-places endure from one generation to
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44 THE LESSON OF THE STORMS. [v.
another;" till suddenly, in an instant, the judgment
of God bursts upon them ; some fearful visitation, as
men call it, occurs in the midst of them, and then
they start up, trembling for an instant, and call for a
light to look into their own souls, and cry earnestly,
"What must we do?*'
And one of these visitations has occurred, and it
has been as I have said. During this week past, all
hearts have been turned in one direction ; all voices
have been asking "What can we do?" Feelings
of charity long pent up have burst their barrier; all
hesitation and scruple have been swept away, and the
rich have given of their abundance, and the poor of
their poverty, in response to the cry of woe and need
that has risen from the shores of the Bay. And still
more will be done, for more is still required. But
what I want now, brethren, to do, is to examine with
you into the real state of the case, as it has been, and
as it ought to be, not with your poor suffering neigh-
bours at Brixham, but with poor sufferers nearer home
still ; I mean with your own souls.
Sufferers, I say, in many cases ; for how have they
been treated ? Is it not true in this age generally — is
it less true here in Torquay — that we live in times of
luxury ? And luxury is self-indulgence ; and how shall
we separate between self-indulgence and selfishness?
and how shall we define this form of selfishness, this
luxury ? Is it not an especial care for the body at the
expense of the soul ? And what does it make those
who are utterly given up to it, but deserters from the
Cross of Christ, who deny Him when they cease to
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v.] THE LESSON OF THE STORMS, 4$
deny themselves ; who are described by the Apostle as
" enemies of the Cross of Christ, whose end is de-
struction, whose god is their belly, whose glory is in
their shame, who mind earthly things,^*
Brethren, it is not for a moment that I mean to say
that we, as a community in this place, are worse than
other places, or are worse at this time than usual \ I
do not mean to say that we are more worldly, or more
frivolous, or more self-indulgent, this winter than other
winters; but I do mean that the lightning flash of
calamity, which has so terribly illuminated our position
for a moment, and the contrast of your own generosity
and the comfortable affluence from which it flows, as
compared with the condition of the dying and the
rescued, the bereaved and the ruined, help us to see
more vividly, perhaps, than we ever did before, how
absorbingly and with what success all our efforts are
too frequently directed to the gratification and the
pampering of self And further, while I say that
this calamity and this force of contrast show us no-
thing new or exceptional in the condition of society,
but simply open our eyes and thoughts to its ordinary
state ; so neither does the want, or danger, or death,
or bereavement, which we are for a moment com-
pelled to look on, represent really any exceptional
case, but only forms the scene upon which our gaze
rests for the time being, in the great drama of woe, and
want, and sadness that is always being enacted on
the earth.
Well, then, if the result of this great calamity is to
reveal to us two things of which we thought but
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46 THE LESSON OF THE STORMS, [v.
little before — the habitual slavery in which we lived to
the world and self, and the unbroken tale of sorrow and
disaster which is ever sounding round our very doors—
surely the lesson it is intended to teach us is, not to
start up to some one great spasmodic effort, and then
relapse again, and leave things as they were, — turn
back once more to our eating and drinking, our
marrying and giving in marriage, our buying and
selling, our planting and building, in one word, our
pleasure, our social enjoyments, our business, till God
arouse us with another sorer visitation, perhaps our
own death, — but rather to examine into ourselves, and
to regard our neighbour's condition, and see if we
cannot by the grace of God break through that tyranny
of habit and fear of the world which keeps so many
in bondage. These great events call up great efforts,
— and any sudden and remarkable piece of misfortune
in England calls forth, for that occasion, all that is
required in the way of money. But that is not, or
should not be, all. It should call forth some honest
plain speaking from those to whom God says, " If the
watchman see the sword come, and blow not the
trumpet, and the people be not warned ; if the sword
come, and take any person from among them, he is
taken away in his iniquity ; but his blood will I require
at the watchman's hand. So thou, O son of man, I
have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel ;
therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and
warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O
wicked man, thou shalt surely die ; if thou dost not
speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked
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v.] THE LESSON OF THE STORMS. 47
man shall die in his iniquity ; but his blood will I require
at thine hand." And it should lead the people to listen,
not to that man's words, but to that Wisdom "who
crieth without, who uttereth her voice in the streets "
— and that voice, that pealing voice of warning, that
voice almost as of one rising from the dead to teach
us, should drive us inward to our own consciences, till
the sense of insecurity of all earthly things which the
earthquake of calamity awakes in us, and the desolation
of heart which the tempest of passionate grief leaves
in us, and the dry and hopeless inactivity to which the
scorching fire of mere remorse reduces us, bring us at
last in the silence of deep self-searching to hear that
still small voice which tells us we are standing in the
presence of our Saviour God.
And what does that voice say to many of us ? It
says that while we have been at ease, and seen all
things quiet around us, we have gone quietly on
occupied wdth whatever has pleased our fancies at the
time ; not startling ourselves or others with any great
crime, but, unconsciously to a great degree, becoming
the enemies of Christ and the worshippers of sense,
while we minded earthly things ; till things, harmless
in themselves, became through their abuse the deadliest
evils ; and in no figure of speech men's table became
a snare to take themselves withal ; while "the harp
and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their
feasts ; but they regard not the work of the Lord,
neither consider the operation of his hands." Is it
not true that this age is unparalleled, in the recollection
of any living, in the lavish expenditure on dress, on
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48 THE LESSON OF THE STORMS, [v.
entertainments, on amusements ? The distant comers
of the earth minister not to our necessities only, but to
our fancies ; and invention is taxed for means first to
stimulate the appetite which must then be gratified.
And do not think that I am speaking of only one
class : through every stage in society, only tinged in
each with the peculiar characteristic of the stratum
through which it passes, the same tendency to self-
indulgence runs riot ; in every grade we see more and
more, blended strangely with the intense energy and
restlessness of the day, those very things which the
prophet taught were the seeds of the sin and ruin of
Sodom — " pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of
idleness was in her and her daughters ; neither did
she strengthen the hands of the poor and needy."
But lest we should fall asleep on the edge of the
sleeping volcano, to wake too late when it awakes, God
has spoken to us, called to us, as a father would call
to his son whom he sees heedlessly or wilfully tread-
ing on the edge of danger. He has aroused us one
and all : and He has aroused us by the grandest of
motives — sympathy for the sufifering, and admiration
for the brave. He has taken us so far out of our-
selves ; He has led us so far in the direction of that
which His Word tells us is " pure religion, and unde-
filed before God and the Father : to visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction, and to keep ourselves
unspotted from the world."
This life — for it is a life, a course of habits, which
is spoken of, not an occasional exertion — will pre-
serve us alike from the lethargy and from the fate of
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v.] THE LESSON OF THE STORMS, 49
the old world and of Sodom. And what an oppor-
tunity affords itself, now that your hearts are softened,
your sympathies aroused — now that your tears, as I
verily believe, have flowed with those of the sorrow-
ing ones and the anxious ones, who have watched,
and looked, and waited for tliose they loved, or have
had tlfeir trembling hopes all rudely scattered by. a
speedy and a mournful certainty. For the fatherless
and the widows in their affliction I plead; and I
plead not merely for their present wants, but I plead
with the further request to you to trust me with the
disposal of what you dedicate to God to-day; that
if enough be, in a few days, provided for the present
and temporal wants of those who are now saved, I
may employ what you commit to me for the good of
future orphans, the relief of widows who may yet be
rendered desolate through the perils of the sea.
I plead for the fatherless and the widow. Let me tell
you of one, a sailor's wife, the mother of three sailor
sons. She waited for her husband last Wednesday
week; his work was well-nigh done; he seldom ven-
tured to sea j threescore and four winters had passed
over his head; but he remained near land to help as
pilot on board out-going ships. That night he was
so employed, but the sea arose, as you know, sud-
denly ; he did not go ashore in one boat that left the
ship, little thinking of the danger that was at hand ;
after that it was too late ; the ship was seized by the
storm ; one anchor gave way about eleven, she parted
from the other at twelve o'clock ; she drifted on the
rocks, and he was soon known to be drowned. The
E
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50 THE LESSON OF THE STORMS, [v.
news was brought to his wife ; but they brought also
to her home four sailws that were rescued ; and that
woman, in the hour of her widowhood, tended these
men, unarmed them, fed them, and covered them with
the clothes of her husband, and what she could find
of her three sailor sons. There is a thought, close
at hand, for any of us, if we shrink from exertion for
others even to nurse the most sacred grief of our
own ; there is a thought, in that poor widow giving all
she could in the raiment of her dead and absent dear
ones, for those who clothe themselves in the most
gorgeous apparel, and strip it off after a few days*
or hours' wear, not ta clothe the naked, but to indulge
in the charm of novelty.
I plead for such as she was in her charity and devo-
tion; I plead for the poor young widow who sits
watching at the door, and listening for the steps of
those who shall bring all that she can hope to see of
her husband, upon earth. I plead for the brave men
too, that they may go forth to their honest manly toil
amid the dangers of the wind and sea with lighter
hearts, as they think that, should they return no more.
Christian charity has provided some Home, some
education for their boys; and I plead lastly — oh,
pardon me, dear brethren, for my importunity — I
plead for your own souls.
Another great warning, another great responsibility,
another great message of life and death, and the world
to come, to break in upon " the common round of
life from hour to hour ; " another opportunity to visit —
ay, not merely to relieve, but to visit — to go to, to be
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v.] THE LESSON OF THE STORMS, 51
interested in, to sympathize with, the fatherless and
the widow ; another solemn memento of the shortness
of life, and a reminder that this world passeth away.
Another proof of the nearness of this world to the
next : another warning not to love this world, not to
be entangled with its pleasures, or cheated with its
wiles, or engrossed with its cares, or defiled by its
practices : another invitation to side with Him who
has bidden us be of good cheer, because He has
overcome the world, and that at the cost of His
blood.
Another great warning, another great responsibility,
— if yet another come to any of us, where will the
rest of us be ? how shall we then wish that we had
used this ?
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VI.
THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING.
S. Luke xi. 41.
But rather give alms of suck things as ye have; and, behold , all
things are clean unto you.
Our Lord uses language very similar to that out of
which my text is taken on another very different occa-
sion. S. Matthew records much that is said here, and
a great deal more, in his twenty-third chapter. There
our Lord is delivering His last, grandest, most awful
message of heart-searching rebuke to the Pharisaic
Jews. He is closing His ministry with a sublimity of
denunciation that seems almost a prelude, and cer-
tainly a similitude, of the stem condemnation of the
last day, when the ministry of reconciliation shall
itself be closed ; and hypocrisy, which always seemed
to receive the most terrible of all censures at our
Lord's hands — perhaps because the essence of it is to
clothe what is in itself base and devilish with the
attitudes and appearances of what is divine — shall be
finally unseated from its throne in the world, and the
actor's mask and disguise stripped bff, and all things
be seen, at last and forever, as they are.
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VI.} THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING. if
But on the occasion which S. Luke brings before
us, and which I would bring before you this morn-
ing, the same warning is spoken to the same class
of hearers, but on a different scale, and under widely
different circumstances. Our Lord is asked to dine,
and He goes. WherCy S. Luke does not inform us —
he is remarkably indefinite as to locality in this
passage. Even Bethany is only noticed in the preced-
ing chapter as " a certain village," — but it would seem
to be not at Jerusalem. He had been preaching one
of His most stirring sermons; He had been casting
out a devil, He had been opening the lips of the
dumb and unstopping the ears of the deaf. He had
been giving not only to the Apostles, but to the whole
Church, the holy form of words which embodies the
prayer of the Church's children. He had bean draw-
ing the attention of multitudes. He had touched the
sympathies and elicited the admiration of the rich and
the poor ; then a certain Pharisee asked Him to dine.
He went, and with His presence hallowed the occa-
sion, and at the same time seized the opportunity of
introducing His own teaching with an appropriateness
and a power which might have been wanting had He
not had the circumstances as they were before Him
and His hearers. It is marvellous, this lesson of our
Lord's mixing in the world. We read frequently of
His joining in the entertainments of different classes
about Him. We see always on these occasions that
He made use of them either to work a miracle or to
touch the heart Yet this was the same Lord who Re-
nounced the unrighteous mammon ; who inculcated,
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5+ THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING, [vi.
nay, set the example of strictest self-denial ; who with-
drew Himself into the wilderness and prayed, and
whose chosen, miraculously chosen, herald was the
sternest preacher of repentance that ever startled a
guilty soul. Little wonder that the world — always
Christ's enemy, always ready to find fault, condemned
S. John for moroseness, and said he was possessed,
and always inconsistent — said of Christ, " Behold, a
gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans
and sinners." And great need, with the same spirit
still at work, to remember that Jesus' commentary
on this was, that "Wisdom is justified of all her
children."
But I am specially concerned with the special point
of our Lord's address. That same denunciation of
hypocrisy which He spoke with such public solemnity
at the close of His ministry in the temple to the mul-
titude breathes in His language here, at a private
social festivity, showing not only, as I have already
intimated, the duty of Christians, who are leaven, to
mix in the world, at proper times and under proper
circumstances, but also that, in public and in private,
the teaching of the Christian ministry, the conduct of
the individual Christian, is to be the same ; neveraim-
ing in public at a pitch of unreal excellence, never
laying aside, on the week-day and in private, the
character of the public teaching of the sanctuary.
But I say there is a special point in our Lord's
address, and towards this I am borne by various con-
current circumstances.
In the first place, the season and the services remind
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VI.] THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING. 55
US of it Last Sunday, the Epistle and the Collect
told us what is God's revelation, and expressed what
ought to be our desires with regard to charity. A
season is dawning upon us which, like everything that
God gives us dowered with remarkable graces, is en-
cumbered by our enemy with extraordinary hindrances.
Those who do wish to follow Christ's example on this
side of the question, and fast, are exposed, as sad ex-
perience shows us, to the perils of self-exaltation in
their very process of self-humiliation, and to pride,
and contempt of others who fail to reach the same
standard as themselves. How needful their charity —
charity of feeling ; and that charity of feeling needs
opportunities of fit expression in act.
Again, one particular form of charity is brought
before us here very often, I admit. But I do not
admit that I am open to reproach for it. Every
Sunday for general purp6ses, and now and then for
special ones, your aid is asked. Every Sunday there*
fore you are invited to participate in the blessings
which Christ attaches to this special development of
charity ; and there are great blessings and great bene-
fits belonging to it which we will consider presently.
But a practice which has grown into a habit here cer-
tainly does not deserve, whatever be its tendency, to
be passed over without consideration fi*om this place,
not simply on the grounds of the special objects on
which that habit is at any time to exercise itself, but
generally as a principle affecting, as all habits do, your
whole life here and hereafter.
But yet once more ; there is to-day a special object,
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56 THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING, [vi.
and a special appeal, which speaks to us in the voice
of the poor and suffering. Now, with regard to these
three lines of concurrent circumstances which draw
our attention to the text of to-day. And first, as to
the season and the services. Bear in mind all that
we have b^en considering, and all that our Lord said
about hypocrisy. Think of the season past, the sea-
son of gaiety ; and of the season now commenced,
the season of retirement. Remember that if it be
inconsistent at certain times to enter into the society
of our fellow-creatures, not to consider anything un-
clean that God has cleansed, and at other times to
seek the most careful retirement for prayer, self-examin-
ation, solitude and fasting, then our dear Lord was
inconsistent, for He did this. On the other hand, if
the religion be but an outward cloak — assumed when
convenient, worn when comfortable — if it be a sort of
enamel laid over our decaying self-satisfaction, or an
attempt to robe ourselves in white over a body of foul
uncleanness, then aot the sternest outward devotion,
not the fast twice every week, nor the tithes of all we
possess, will justify us in the sight of God, or draw
anything from Him but the most awful condemnation.
But if we feel in our inmost hearts that even in things
allowable there is a danger ; if we know that without
stooping to individual criticizing, the love of the world
and the gratifying of self are quick-growing weeds,
and often spring up and smother the promise even of
the good seed ; if it be a law that none of us can
endure to be long in any society, and give and take
in it, without some mutual assimilation going on ; and
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VI.] THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING, 57
if in all minds and in all men, and with not an in-
creased, but a multiplied power amongst bodies of
people, the inferior part of human nature imparts and
admits its^ own influence more readily than the good ;
then, after such a season as we have here in this place,
U must be at least the part of wisdom to examine
your souls, to see what befoulment we may have con-
tracted in our passage through the seas and among
the shores of society. And therefore, to the intent
that we may do this with sincerity and effect, we draw
our vessel up as it were, we leave those glittering
waters for a while ; if Christ be on the mountain pray-
ing, His disciples on the sea are tempest-tost, and in
danger. And if we seek that danger wilfully, if we
remain in it carelessly, we cannot expect Him then to
come to us over the stormy waves and bid us " Fear
not, for it is He." But supposing we do seek Him in
retirement from the world, how must it be ? Our fast,
nay, all our religion, must be consecrated by charity in
act as well as in word and feeling. " Is not this the fast
that I have chosen ? " saith the Lord ; " to loose the
bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and
to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every
yoke ? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and
that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house ?
when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him ; and
that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?"
" Then," says God, " shall thy light break forth as the
morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily :
and thy righteousness shall go before thee ; the glory
of the Lord shall be thy rereward." So does God in
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58 THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING, [vi.
the Old Testament define the nature and blessing of
a true fast; so does liberal-handed charity sanctify
even religious usage ; so does the prophet's voice lead
us on from the law to the royal law of love to our
neighbour — on to the Gospel, where the little things
of our daily life are set before us as means whereby
we may strike out the direction of that life of Faith
which worketh evermore by Love.
True Christian charity, then, at this season, may'help
to hallow the season and its fast
But we said that our thouglits were continually
directed in this place towards the subject of charitable
almsgiving, and that herein was an opening to us
towards the attainment of many blessings. It must
be so, if the text be true. I said also, that this
deserved the direct notice of him who addresses you
from this place. For what is continually done be-
comes a habit, and our habits not only form the staple
of our character here, but they mould us for eternity.
Now to this habit of almsgiving how do we annex the
declaration of the text ? The habit itself, what is it ?
not a mere external, for Christ is most terribly con-
demning mere externals, but crowns almsgiving with
His promise. It must represent something within ; it
must spring from something within. And we believe
this of offertorial almsgiving above all others. The
habit of giving a small sum regularly ; the giving it in
secret, so that none but God and you know what is
contributed; the knowledge that it is given at a
solemn time, for a charitable purpose, and dedicated
to God in the act of giving — these all, to a* thoughtful
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VI.] IHE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING. 59
person, make the act of contributing at the oflfertory
a serious and a holy act But it becomes more holy
and more blessed if we trace it further, most literally
blessing him that gives and him that takes. It is a
blessing to many a sick-bed and many a hungry hcwae ;
it fills the hand of your Mother Church to dispense
to her needy children. It reaches to poor streets and
to sorrowing homes ; it flies too, not on the wings
which riches hoarded make to themselves, but, on
the wings of Love, to places far away. The reHef of
temporal wants, great as the blessing of that is, is
eclipsed by the knowledge that by your offerings you
aid in spreading the light of Gospel truth to the
heathen in foreign lands that know not God, and to
the darkened souls of millions of your own fellow-
countrymen who know nothing of a Saviour's love. And
it blesses you here too. The ministry of God in this
house, in all material things, is entirely provided by
your alms, and even one of the ministers is supported
by your offerings. What is the blessing, then, in which
you share, what is the glorious habit which has taken
root in you of helping the oppressed and the sorrowing;
touching hearts, as well as soothing pains, by your
Christian love, and drawing down the blessings which
you may receive for yourselves from the ministry of
the Church! So far this habit. And yet further, it
hallows all you have. Your alms are first-fruits of
all your substance. By offering them here at God's
altar you consecrate all. If the first-fruits be holy, the
lump also is holy ; and by giving out of your store
regularly, and in sincerity to God, you bring yourself
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6o THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING, [vi.
to spend all that you have in ways which He would
approve. All expenditure proceeds from the starting-
point in the direction of that which is of real use or
innocent gratification. It is incredible that one should
come and give at the altar of God what is due to man
as a debt : or that we should pare off for God and His
poor or His work that which can be scraped from
the price of foolish, or vicious, or luxurious taste.
And as all our actions depend so much on the way we
spend our money, it is not so hard as it might at first
sight appear to gather what our Lord means when
He rebukes the costly self-indulgence of the hypo-
critical Pharisee, and tells him and us to ** give alms
of such things as we have; and, behold, all things
are clean unto us.'*
But whilst we ponder with tkankfulness on the
upgrowth of love, the check upon self-indulgence,
the aids to honesty and sobriety which the habit of
Christian almsgiving induces, it is terrible also to
remember that there is such a thing as the formation
of a contrary habit. Those who time after time
refuse to contribute, if they can, are also forming a
habit ; those too who contribute not in proportion to
their means, but who use the cover of the bag to veil
a real parsimony under a pretence of Charity — they
are forming a habit. And what a habit is it ! The
habit of refusing Christ when He appeals : the habit
of shutting the ears to all pleading that is for Christ :
the habit of self-deception, as excuses are framed and
urged till they are really believed by the maker of
them : the habit perhaps of imitating the Pharisees,
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VI.] THE MORAL EFFECT OF ALMSGIVING, 6i
who paid tithes of mint, and anise, and cummin, gave
strictly of that which was really worth nothing, but
neglected the weightier matters of the law, judgment,
mercy, and faith. Brethren, I say these things, not to
condemn you — for I thank God for what you have
done, and for what you do; your liberality has
abounded, especially of late — but I think it right to
stir you up by putting you in remembrance of what
blessed things Christ has said of almsgiving, and by
consequence what remains for the contrary habit;
and also that we, who are now especially seeking
Christ's presence in penitence and devotion, may use
this help to which He points us, that we may not
come as the hypocrites do, but with a righteous-
ness exceeding the righteousness of the Scribes and
Pharisees.
Little remains now to say on the third head, the
special case of to-day to help the Infirmary in this
town. You know its objects; and your help in re-
lieving its needs and ministering to the poor who are
sufferers there, I would rather leave to flow spon-
taneously from the working of the principles I have
sketched to you, than from any harrowing appeal to
your feelings for this special occasion. I would leave
it to your own loving hearts ; to the thought how in
works of mercy we are indeed fellow-workers with
Christ, who so loved us that He gave Himself for us ;
and to the thought of that gentle command that we
have of Him — "that He who loveth God, love his
brother also."
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VII.
FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD.
(PREACHED AT AN ORDINATION ON TRINITY SUNDAY, l8C6.)
2 Cor. vi. 2.
We then^ as workers together with Him^ beseech you also that ye
receive not the grace of God in vain.
When Elijah had restored the Altar of God which
was broken down, and had laid the wood in order,
and placed the victim on it, he waited in earnest
prayer till the fire of God descended, and kindled
and consumed the sacrifice ; and in so doing accepted
it. When He who was greater than Elias had pre-
pared the mystical Body of Himself, even the Church,
purchased it with His blood, taught it by His words,
formed it by His example, He waited, and He bade
it wait, till in the appointed time the fire of God
descended again, even the Holy Ghost Himself, to
kindle the sacrifice, and by kindling to acknowledge
and accept it : to kindle the warmth of love and the
glow of action in every member, till each and all
should be ready to be consumed, to spend, and be
spent, in a life of self-sacrifice for the glory of God
and the good of souls.
And this day, when hearts again are laid upon
God'g altar — ^when, as I trust, the sacrifice of body,
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VII.] FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. 63
soul, and spirit, is freely offered by those who hear
the call, "Go, work to-day in my vineyard" —
the sacrifice can neither be acceptable before God
nor profitable to men, unless the fire of God descend
to kindle it; unless, dear brethren, you receive it —
even the influence of the Holy Ghost, and the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Father's love —
not in vain, not into an empty heart " swept and
garnished," but into the chamber of a soul where
the gifts of grace already vouchsafed to you have
been cherished and improved, and where the devo-
tion of a life is the offering now prepared; lying
ready, but motionless as yet, till the Heavenly spark
descends to purge out what still remains of the
selfish and corruptible, and to quicken you with the
Pentecostal gift into lifelong work for God.
Let us then, brethren, as you stand here this day,
with a life of unknown dignity, responsibility, diffi-
culty before you, look into the text, by the grace of
God, to see what the work of God is, and what it
declares to us of the Great Worker ; let us see how we
are associated in His work : let us consider how that
association forms our ground of appeal to you ; and
let us consider the force of the appeal which S. Paul
makes to you and to all.
I. What the work of God is ; and what it declares
to us of the Great Worker! This day of the year
reminds us how we may fully and yet simply answer
this question. The work of Creation, of Redemption,
of Sanctification, declare to us the existence and the
operation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
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64 FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. [vii.
They bring us before God, not only revealed in His
word, but manifest in His works around us and within
us. They lead us to the lesson taught us by the
outspread page of learning, and bring us to com-
pare that lesson with the teaching of the page of
revelation; till sea and sky, and flood and moun-
tain, the seasons' order and the wants of men, the
outward voice of harmony and beauty, and the very
fact of existence, lead us to listen with attentive ear
to what Psalmist sung, or Evangelist revealed, or
Apostle taught, and to weigh the statements from
one end of the Bible to the other, and find them
at least consistent as a whole, all testifying to, and
confirming, what we read this morning, that " In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth;"
that He said, " Let there be," and " it was so/'^
Again, the service of the day brings before us
Christ, not only manifest in the flesh, but acknow-
ledged by the Father;* not only walking this earth,
but ascending up into heaven ; not only the Son of
Man lifted up for the saving of the world, but also
the victory of Faith won through Him by His people.3
Not only do we see the Nazarene asking Baptism
at His servant's hand, but we are admitted to gaze
for a moment into heaven itself; to look upon the
sapphire throne, to hear the angels' song, to bow
before the Almighty power of the thrice holy God,
among the multitude of the redeemed.^
^ Genesis i. First Morning Lesson for Trinity Sunday.
^ S. Matthew iii. 13 — 17. Second Morning Lesson.
3 S. John iii. 13—15. Gospel for day.
•* Revelation iv. Epistle for day.
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VII.] FELLOW^WORKERS WITH GOD, 65
And yet once more. To-day we hear of the Spirit's
viewless work; of the dove-like brooding over an
uncreated world ; of the Spirit who is the Lord God,^
and the Giver of life ; and to recognise also the im-
parting of the same gift of life by the same Holy
Ghost, both in the great new birth of water and the
Spirit,^ and also in that understanding, that know-
ledge of Him who is true, which is given to us
who are " in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus
Christ."3
" This," says S. John, " this is the true God and
eternal life ; " and adds, " Little children, keep your-
selves from idols." And, brethren, you who desire to
lay hold upon the more than earthly calling of being
fellow-workers with God, bear with me in addressing
you thus on the nature and work of Him whom you
have to serve, with Whom you dare to desire to work.
There is neither novelty in the truths I am putting
before you, nor is there attractiveness in the garb in
which they are clothed. But there is for many minds,
alas, attractiveness, though there be but little novelty,
in the counter-doctrines which are only too current
in the world. You, at any rate, who are to be called
to work in towns, will find more and more a fearful
obligation laid upon you to know and answer Who
and what that God is, as whose messenger you claim
a hearing; The World speaks of a God. Science ac-
knowledges a God Self-interest rather desires a God
But they must be gods according to man's definition,
* Morning— First Lesson. ' Gospel.
3 I S. John V, 20, 21. Evening — Second Lesson.
F
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66 FELLOW-V/ORKERS WITH GOD. [vii.
not according to God's word. A God who only
formed the world out of matter eternal as Himself,
is that the God of whom S. Paul declares, ** He is
before all things, and by Him all things consist?''*
A God who cannot suspend His own laws if He
sees fit, or can only answer prayer according to the
laws of human science, is that the Almighty God ?
Is that the true and truthful God who has said, by
His prophet, " Call upon me in the time of trouble ;
so will I hear thee, and thou shalt praise me;"*
by His Son, " Ask, and it shall be given you
for every one that asketh receiveth"?3 A God
whose death and passion in His Son was no atoning
sacrifice, but simply an example of unattainable obedi-
ence, is that the sinner's God — the Author of the
ministry of reconciliation, which it is yours, my breth-
ren, from this day forward to declare to those who,
apart from that atonement, have no present comfort,
no balm for the wounded soul, no hope for the worli
to come? A God who promises eternal life, and
threatens eternal death in the same language,^ but
means that eternal life is to be understood as such,
eternal death to be but a figure of speech, may be
the God of the sin4oving and yet heaven-expecting,
but can never be the God of those who place their
whole trust in Him ; who believe that man lives " by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God;"
and who feel that if God says on one momentous
' Colossians i. 17. » Psalm 1. 15.
3 S. Matthew vii. 7.
* S. Matthew xxv. 46.
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VII. J FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. 67
subject what is vague or unreal, it is dangerous to
believe Him elsewhere.
But it is with the Almighty, the All-knowing, the
All-loving, the All-true God, that we, to use S. Paul's
words, are " fellow-workers."
II. But how? and where? Not of course in the literal
creation, or in the providence of the world. There
God reigns alone. There Christ alone can say, " My
Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Nor yet in
the world of politics. With civic honours, or imperial
state, reflections though they be of the one great
Power from which alone they receive their force, we
of the ministry have no call to entangle ourselves.
"But the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the
house of Israel;" the work for which He employs
man, and in which He lets man be a fellow-worker
with Himself, " is the work of man's culture ; it is
wrought in the Church of His redeemed, and the
living energies of His redeemed are the workmen
therein." Therefore it is that S. Paul in another
place, using the same strong language as in the text,
applies it as we here affirm ; weaving it in with the
other great metaphor, so as to show the two sides
of the Christian minister's work : the building up,
where the subject is passive, to show that all comes
from God ; the culture and the growth, which show
there is a something, even in the disciple, which has
life, and which must respond to the care bestowed
upon it "We are labourers with God," he says;
"ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.""
' I Corinthians iii. 9.
F 2
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68 FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD, [vii.
Here, in the vineyard of the Church of God ; here,
in that spiritual Temple which is the whole Body
of the redeemed, in which each single soul is a
microcosm of the whole, each single living stone
itself a shrine of awful sanctity, the dwellirig-plabe
of the Holy Ghost; amidst these, dear brethren in
Christ, God's work, our work, your work, lies. In
the vineyard, where are the trees of God's planting,
where every living shoot is a branch of the mystical
Vine, where God's servants have laboured through
the burden and heat of the day, and you in the latter
days are called; where the greatest devotion, the
most untiring zeal, the most brilliant talents, may
find their noblest sphere of labour, and where all
may be eclipsed by the patient, unnoticed work of
one whose only strength is to "be strong in the
Lord ; " where, associated in that holy work, a Paul
may plant, and an Apollos water, but where God
alone can give the increase; there is our life-long
part In that great building which rises stone by
stone, in which no noise of axe or hammer is heard,
no sound of striving and crying, no din of human
inventions, which rests on one Eternal foundation,
on that Rock which is Christ, and on which, as wise
master-builders, those who are called by Christ in
the order of their ministry raise up, soul by soul, the
abiding edifice of the Temple of the redeemed ; in
that not only " are ye builded together for an habi-
tation of God through the Spirit," but in that also
ye have to labour, " taking heed how ye build upon
the one Foundation which is laid, even Jesus Christ"
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VII.] FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD, 69
And mark, in passing, that word " how." As'Christ
said of the first receiving of the seed for your own
souls, "Take heed how ye hear," so S. Paul urges
on those who are to labour, even in the right place
and on the right Foundation, "Take heed how ye
build." For in that vineyard are many noxious weeds ;
in that vineyard-fence, full often, is the inclosure
broken down ; and in that building many a time do
we find the intermixture of " the wood, hay, stubble j"
and frequent and sore is the temptation to take what
we find ready to hand, to spare the search, to flinch
from the diflUculty, to escape the odium, of insisting
on that and that alone which we know is the gold,
the silver, the true strong marble of the full doctrine
of Christ. But in that sphere of spiritual action
where you are fellow-workers with God, see how He
works. It is true He works most comprehensively.
He made the world : He redeemed mankind : He
sanctifies the Catholic Church. But He deals with
individuals. So you will be placed to deal compre-
hensively : to preach the Word to all : to provide
the ministry of the Sacraments for all. But your
work, your real work, your abiding work, your work
which will bring you on your knees with your eyes
running and your hearts full with thankfulness for
mercies in your labour that you cannot describe, is
work with individuals. Christ worked with indivi-
duals : dealing with the inquirer's doubts in the mid-
night retirement:' finding and comforting the man
whom his companions had cast out:^ dealing with
' S. John iii. 2. » S. John ix. 35.
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70 FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. [vii.
one sinful soul apart, when even the disciples were
astonished at such special care; probing her, and
moving her to self-examination and confession, to
amendment of life, and to work for others ;^ receiving
another, and only speaking to her heart the words
of personal absolution, when the cruel and self-
righteous, one by one, conscience-stricken, had shrunk
away,'' — nay, bending down to mingle His tears with
Mary's at the sepulchre,3 or to bear with Martha's
plaints; 4 so dealt He who also fed the thousands
with the loaves, nay, sustains men and angels with
His word. So dealing with individuals. He explained
the Gbod Shepherd's care who "knows His sheep
by name," 5 who went out into the wilderness to seek
for the *'one sheep that was lost;"^ who in giving
His life^for the sheep " should taste death for every
man. "7 So too deals the Eternal Father, before whom
"not one" of the sparrows is forgotten, and who
sends to each man the message of the Holy Spirit,
" dividing to every man severally as he will ; "^ striving
with the individual soul, and stirring great emotions
there which none but that man alone, and God, may
know. And so He bids you, by the force of example ;
so He prompts you by the indwelling of His Spirit ;
so He nerves you, by the gifts He gives you, to
go to that work whereunto you are called, and to
deal patiently, considerately, devotedly, separately,
' S. John iv. 7 et seq. * S. John viii. ii.
3 S. John xi. 35. -♦ S. Luke x. 40, 41.
s S. John X. 3. ^ S. Luke xv. 4.
7 Hebrews ii. 9. ^ i Corinthians xii. 11.
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VII.] FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD, 71
with each one of those immortal souls that by His
providence come within the range of your influ-
ence.
The work, then, of the ministry, let me say it with
all humility, and in the way which S. Paul indicates,
is a fellow-working with God, to carry out His ends
in regard to man, and reflects the threefold work-
ing of the Blessed and Mysterious Trinity.
" My httle children," says S. Paul, " of whom I
travail in birth a second time till Christ be formed in
you." ^ The awful feeling of spiritual paternity, the
calling of souls to life by the utterance of the Word
in the new creation of God, breathes in this yearning
utterance of the great Apostle. And again, those
solemn and well-weighed words in the Epistle to the
Romans which introduce his declaration, " I could
wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh," ^ show a
reflection of His feeling who " was made a curse for
us," who gave up life itself in His love for those whom
He stooped to call not enemies, not servants, but
friends and brethren, among whom He was the first-
bom. And thirdly, by the energy his example inspired
— the reality and sincerity and zeal he kindled in others
— S. Paul proves that he was '" an able minister of the
New Testament . . . of the Spirit which giveth life; " 3
working in the power of the Holy Ghost, whether in
the task of convincing of sin, of righteousness and
' Galatians Iv. 19 ; cf. also i Corinthians iv. 15.
' Romans ix. 3. ^2 Corinthians iii. 6.
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72 FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD, [vii.
of judgment in " delivering such an one to Satan," *
or in the work of " comforting them which are in any
trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are
comforted of God.'* * And the reality of this work,
and at the same time the humility and unfitness of
the human agent, he testifies in the question, " Who
is sufficient for these things ? " 3 and by attributing
to God the result of all his sufiferings, labours, and
successes in the cry, " Yet not I, but the grace of
God which was with me." ^
III. As fellow-workers with God, what a title is
yours, what dignity is yours ! God who made souls,
God who redeemed souls, God who sanctifies souls,
places you side by side with Himself, face to face
with the work of caring for souls. As receiving the
grace of God, what power is yours : not power in the
sense of being "lords over God's heritage," but
power to be like Christ : power to work, power to
suffer, power to be cheerful and still to persevere
under failure, disappointment, and distress. And as
being fellow- workers with God, with what a force of
appeal do all the words that I have weakly said, all
the burning thoughts which by the grace of God I
trust are glowing in your minds, press themselves upon
you. As workers together with God, remember, not
only that in being permitted to fill the position in
which He has placed you, you yourselves are honoured
by the King of kings, but that by degrading it, by
choosing anything short of the highest standard, you
' I Corinthians v. 5. '^ 2 Corinthians i. 4,
3 2 Corinthians ii. 16. * I Corinthians xv. 10.
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VII.] FELLOW' WORKERS WITH GOD. 73
are not only disgracing your calling, but you are
in the most fearful, in the most personal way dis-
honouring God Himself. Let me beg you to re-
member that the correct life in public, the unimpeach-
able morality, the stainless honour, which are the
birthright of English gentlemen, are not sufficient
to make the true fellow-worker with God in the
labour of the ministry, unless something more, far
more, be added. Nor is that something the regular
attendance to parochial claims, the careful mainten-
ance of necessary duties, services in your churches
to which you are pledged, visits among your poor by
rule, painstaking and clever lessons in your schools,
beautiful adaptations of parochial mechanism : all
these are but the sacrifice prepared, these are the
dormant form : until that kindling fire descend which
fell at Pentecost; that power from on High, that
gift of the Holy Ghost, that burning, all-absorbing,
all-inflaming, all-influencing spirit which Heaven alone
can light, and which no power on earth can quench ;
that grace of God which the Apostle besought his
converts, which we beseech you, that ye receive not in
vain.
But if the punctilious discharge of official duties
fall short of the standard which we would aim at,
let me then go on — I trust without bitterness, I trust
with all humility, and with the feeling that it is not
I, a weak and erring mortal, but an ambassador 6f
Christ speaking — to ask you for a moment to think of
that man as a fellow-worker with God whose time is
dedicated to his own convenience ; whose work is
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74 FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD, [vii.
mapped out, if mapped out at all, to secure the
shortest time of labour, the longest of recreation;
who performs perfunctorily services in his church,
whether reduced to the modicum of supply and the
minimum of interest by coldness, dulness, deadness,
in the sanctuary, the services, the ministry ; or per-
formed as an aesthetic gratification, where all the
beauty of form is but a poor compensation for the
want of life. Can such a one be a fellow-worker
with God ? And is the resemblance made easier to
find if we follow him to the easy resting-place of a
quiet home, where all the comers of life are cushioned
oflf, and the very air seems heavy with the sedatives
of conscience ? Or is the picture brighter if we find
him in a more active life, where bodily exercise,
physical recreations, or the most frivolous pleasures
of society divert the attention, unfit the mind, and
quench the inclination for that direct dealing with
the things of eternity, that true sympathy with the
weak, the ignorant, the complaining, the suffering —
that silent protest against self-indulgence to which
one who is a fellow-worker with God should, not
sometimes, but always, be consecrated ?
" He that is not with me," says our Lord, " is against
me ; he that gathereth not with me, scatter eth."
IV. Oh, brethren, with the thought of so high and
solemn a calling — with the work and the power given
us to aid in the salvation of souls — with the possi-
bility of such awful failure — with the certainty of
opposition, weariness, temptation, is there no need
for me to urge, is there no need for you to pray.
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VII.] FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. 75
that ye receive not the grace of God in vain ? It
applies to all: laity and clergy: not to receive in
vain the gift of grace which God offers to all — laity
and clergy. But with what overwhelming force to us !
That you do receive a gift to-day which separates you
from other men, which separates you from what you
have been up to this time, is certain. Besides and
beyond the baptismal gift, besides the Bread of Life
whereby we are incorporated with Christ himself,
there is also the special gift that is in us, as it was in
S. Timothy, by the laying-on of apostolic hands. You
receive it in vain, if you despise it, if you fail to
desire it, or if you desire it not for itself, but for
temporal advantage, social distinction, or worldly
gains : you receive it in vain, if you allow it to lie
idle, and pray not, strive not, for more and more :
you receive it in vain, if you hide it, if you are
ashamed of it : if in dress, or manner, or conduct,
you flinch from declaring yourselves ministers of
Christ : you receive it in vain, if you faint and waver
in the work for which it is given you ; if you hold
back the truth of the atoning Blood of Christ because
the scorn of the educated dislikes such simple teach-
ing : if you keep yourselves always content with the
first foundation of doctrine, the first planting of
the seed, and do not lead your flock on by the pure
waters of the teaching of the Church, or neglect to
urge upon them the need of growth in grace or
devotion to good works; as you feed the flock,
ministering to them diligently the Sacraments as well
as the word of God. But you receive it more awfully
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76 FELLOW-WORKERS WITH GOD. [vii.
vain, if your own hearts are not filled with the burn-
ing love of souls, and the burning love of God : if
you quench your conscience, if you forget your own
spiritual needs, if the Christ whom you are daring
to speak of to others is no personal Saviour to you.
The man in whom the evil spirit was, leaped on such
at Ephesus, and overcame them with the cry, " Jesus
I know, and Paul I know ; but who are ye ? ''
But the grace of God is yours to-day: yours,
with all holy love: yours with pleading power in
your own souls, weaning you from the evil, strengthen*
ing you in the good : yours with all gentle influence
and all prayerful promptings, with all holy hope and
all assuring promise, for this life and the life to come :
all help to yourselves, all blessing to others. God's
ministers of old could use this language ; they could
speak of " Christ in you, the hope of glory : whom we
preach, warning every man, and teaching every man, in
all wisdom ; that we may present every man perfect in
Christ Jesus." May you, may each one of us, not
now only, but through life, be able to answer, " Where-
unto I also labour, according to His working which
worketh in me mightily."^
' Colossians i, 27 — 29.
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VIII.
THE TEACHING OF SILENCE.^
Hab. ii. 2a
The Lard is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence
before him.
There is an eloquence that lives not in words.
There is a power of expression, nay, more, a power
of influence, which all of us ere now have owned,
that never breathed itself away in sound. There is
an appeal to the heart, ay, and to the reason too, in
the language of silence. The child that wakes in
the night and listens for a sound and hears none,
realizes loneliness and vastness and the sense ot
mystery, and cries out for fear. The silence of a
desert land where ice-bound oceans bind up the iron
valleys, and cold grey rocks rise heavenwards untrod-
den by the foot of man, and the bird flies never across
the wintry air, and the very insect's hfe is frozen out,
is impressive ; and nature speaks through it in a voice
man never hears amid the noise of life. And the
silent sea, when no ripple breaks upon the moonlight,
is impressive in its suggestiveness, while its calm
broad surface betrays no trace of wreck, or loss, or
' Preached at the Cathedral Church of SS. Peter and Paul,
Llandaff, September 26, 1866.
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78 THE TEACHING OF SILENCE. [viii.
bleaching corpse which lie below it, like the cruel
designs that work concealed under the smooth calm
brow of the wicked clever man. And there is a voice
in the silence of old associations, as we stand amid
the relics of the past : as we come back, perhaps, after
a long journey in distant lands, to the home of our
childhood, and find, it maybe, the well-known haunts
deserted, the very house that sheltered our infancy
dismantled, and the loved occupants dead or gone.
Still the old walls and the once famihar path, the
meadow stile, the old oak-tree in which one hundred
years scarce seem to make a difference, all speak to
us like voices of the past, and remind us of deeds
long since done, and words (perhaps unkind words)
spoken, and hopes, and fears, and fancies long since
forgotten. And then there is a silence too amongst
men that speaks most unmistakably — the silence of
deep feeling, whether of sorrow, or rage, or attention,
or determination, w^en men have ceased to talk,
because they feel words are out of place and the
time of work has come.
Brethren, such a silence as may be gathered out of
those ideas of silence will help us to understand what
is intended in the text ; and though this day is a day
of joy, and a day of music and of hearty expression,
still the thought of this silence is not out of keeping ;
nay, it is necessary, to make us rightly in keeping with
the proper feeling of this day, and to prevent all that
we are doing degenerating into mere self-glorification
and ambitious display.
The silence we have spoken of in the text is a
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VIII.] THE TEACHING OF SILENCE. 79
silence created by a sense of the present Majesty of
God. We this day, as we rejoice with our voices and
our instruments of music, are bringing ourselves into
that same Presence.
There appear, then, to be three thoughts brought
before us, which I would consider with you in the
following order : —
1. The Presence of God.
2. The work of Music
3. The value of Silence.
(i.) The Presence of God I need not assert,
for God Himself has declared His omnipresence :
" Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool :
where is the house that ye build unto Me ? and where
is the place of My rest ? " '
Yet when Solomon * in nearly these words addressed
Him, the Lord condescended to hear the prayer, and
to accept the ofifering which His servants' hands had
built for Him. The Lord who chose out the taber-
nacle in Shiloh to place His name there — He who
revealed Himself in the wilderness, covering with the
brightness of His presence the tabernacle of the
congregation — He condescended to dwell also in the
temple at Jerusalem : between the cherubims and the
mercy-seat He dwelt whom "the heaven and the
heaven of heavens cannot contain." And every cir-
cumstance of ritual and ceremony was employed to
indicate that God Himself was there, whilst still the
very detail of that gorgeous worship separated as by
a veil the Presence that they announced.
* Isaiah Levi. I. ' i Kings viii. 27.
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8o THE TEACHING OF SILENCE. [viii.
But in the newer dispensation, when type and
emblem took their flight and the plainer worship suc-
ceeded, still there were manifest declarations that
God is among His worshippers of a truth. Though
the fiery tongue of Pentecost be quenched, and the
rushing mighty wind no longer indicate the Spirit's
viewless way, yet an Apostle tells us how the Lord is
still in His holy temple. It is no relic of a bygone
superstition, as some irreverently call the teaching of
the Old Testament, to assert that God is in the midst
of us. Christ Himself has told us that " where two
or three are gathered together in His name, there is
He in the midst of them.'* ' S. Paul has told us how
the mighty power of the Word of God, ministered in
the service of the Church, works even on the im-
believing heart, on the stranger present from curiosity,
on the idler or the captious lounging in to be grati-
fied or to criticize, — on hearts even unpromising as
these still the mighty influence of the Spirit of God
is not without its effect. " One that believeth not,
or one that is unlearned,'' hearing the testimony of
prophecy, the testimony of the earnest preaching of
the Word of God, among the company of them that
believe it and rejoice in it, " is judged of all, is con-
vinced of all ; and thus are the secrets of his heart
made manifest," — ^his inmost longings, his conscious-
ness of sin, his need of a Saviour — "and so falling
down on his face he will worship God, and report
that God is in you of a truth." *
So speak the Old Testament and the New, de-
' S. Matthew xviii. 20. » i Corinthians xiv. 25.
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VIII.] THE TEACHING OF SILENCE. %i
daring to us the presence of the Lord in that place
that He has chosen to put His Name there ; that in
the midst of the typical worship of the Jews, and in
the midst of the assembly of the Christians, still ever
and actually " the Lord is in His holy temple."
And at the present day, with altered circum-
stances externally, are we to suppose the reality is
changed ? Because the Temple gave way to the river
side or the Catacombs, and they in turn to the
Basilica and the Church, are we to think that God
has failed His people or broken His covenant ? Are
we to imagine that now God does not draw near to
hear the prayer addressed to Him, or that, while He is
present everywhere else He excludes Himself from
those sanctuaries where His people specially desire
His presence — where many a broken heart has felt
its sorrows healed by His merciful touch, where many
a true believer has realized His presence, made
known to them in " the breaking of bread " ? And
on this day let us not forget this great truth.
We are here for a festival of parochial choirs.
Yes, but in whose honour is that festival ? In our
own, or God's? Who are we that are present?
And where are we ? We are here as living beings
with immortal souls — as human beings, mortal crea-
tures, in the very presence of the Almighty God.
Here, within these hallowed walls, which for ages
have stood as silent witnesses and guardians of His
worship — where for many a century, and in divers
languages, creed, and chant, and anthem have pealed
along the hallowed roof, or hovered with dove-like
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82 THE TEACHING OF SILENCE, [viii.
trembling softness over the adoring crowd — all, amid
however much of ignorance or error, have testified to
this — that this house is full of the glory of the Lord.
And those who with pious hands and Christian
energy have so nobly reclaimed "this holy and
beautiful house where your fathers worshipped,'' who
have swept away the reproach of desolation, and
called to being again the "storied windows richly
dight," and all the dignity of the long colonnaded
aisle, what lesson have they, in the labour of their
hands and the ardour of their purpose — what have
they declared to us all, but their conviction that " this
is none other than the house of God," while they
would indeed make it for you " the gate of heaven " ?
And, you who come here to-day, you testify to the
same. You come here after weeks of careful training,
you come to render of your best, a glorious offering,
a flood of holy sound, that which of all things that
can appeal to the senses testifies most to the Invisible,
and anticipates the glory of heaven. But to whom
do you offer it ? — not to yourselves, as a loan to be
returned with interest in the praise and admiration of
your friends ; not to the congregation, who are gathered
in such imposing numbers, and whose danger and
temptation is on these occasions lest they should take
to themselves that which is intended for God alone,
and accept the glory of your music as if it were a
tribute to their taste, instead of joining you in offer-
ing it to His Majesty. No, the very words you sing
answer the question for you. The words of prayer
^nd praise alike are addressed to God ; and you
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VIII.] THE TEACHING OF SILENCE, 83
come here for this very reason to sing them, because
the Lord is here.
Oh, that this service might be a truthful and a
living type of all your life before Him ; that, as you
stand here this day in your ordered ranks, with those
holy words upon your lips, and all your utterance
subdued to the noble sway of tune and harmony, so
through all you may henceforth ever stand as in the
very presence of God — " soul and body, always wait-
ing day and night at His command ; " that from our
lips breathe forth no sound but that of harmony and
concord among our fellow-men, encouragement in
duty, sympathy in sorrow, and, above all, of praise
and adoration to our God !
We are come, I say, into the presence of God, to
make with all humility this offering of praise to Him,
humbly praying Him to accept it at our hands, and
to give us grace to render it heartily in expressing
our joy, thanksgiving, and praise to Him for all His •
loving-kindness towards us. It is to dedicate thus
our voice to Him that we are here; and as ew
listen to strains of music now sounding here from
human voice or soul-enthralling instrument, let
all noisy thoughts of self-glorification, the beating
heart of pride, the murmur of criticism — here at
least — sink into silence, as we remember that we are
in the house of God, and that He is in His holy
temple.
(2.) But this brings us to a consideration of my
second subject, the work of music. On that I would
briefly touch in regard of two considerations — ^as an
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84 THE TEACHING OF SILENCE, [viii.
influence, and as a means of expression. As an
influence, which of us is altogether insensible to it ?
What is it among us now? — ^what has it been all through
the history of man ? The one gentle influence among
savage races by which bards have conquered where
warriors have failed, and stubborn hearts been bowed,
and evil spirits chased away : —
" What passion cannot music raise and quell ?
When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
His listening brethren stood around
To worship that celestial sound.
Less than a God they thought there could not dwell
Within the hollow of that shell,
That spoke so sweetly and so well —
What passion cannot music raise and quell ?"
And, not to speak of the wondering awe of savage
tribes, the p9,rabolic victory of the lute over rocks and
trees, and wild beasts and streams — of the pealing
trumpet-sound that seems to penetrate the heart ot
man, and stir, and burn, and thrill within him, till he
vent his rage in war, and quench that fire in blood ;
or the sad, solemn notes that sighed over the corpse
and the grave of the loved one ; or the witching strains
that sounded — ay, and sound still — from the treacher-
ous shores of pleasure, luring men from their course as
they toil across the sea of life, with its duties and its
storms ; from the crash of martial music that whets
the thirst for glory to the mother's song as she rocks
her infant by the cottage door ; — all own that music
has a power to charm and to influence.
But here we must not linger. " There are, it may
be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none
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VIII.] THE TEACHING OF SILENCE. 85
of them is without signification." ' And if in com-
mon things, in war and strife, in this world's pleasures
or in earthly joys, music can do so much, shall we
not use it for the service of God ? Think how the
harp of David cleared away the evil spirit from the
gloomy heart of Saul ; think of the silver trumpets
that swelled the gladness of solemn festival ; think of
that hymn which Christ and His apostles sang — ^that
Eucharistic h)ann, that h)nnn of praise in the midst
of mighty sorrow ; think of the Christian captives in
the prison of Philippi, and the hymns that breathed so
holy an influence in that place of chains and torment.
Nay, who has not known in his own time and case the
influence of sacred music, such as even the Puritan
poet owned, and cried —
" There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear.
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes."
But we must pause. The influence of music must
lead on to something fiurther. If we feel it in any
degree, we are bound to make it our own, and employ
it till we realize something of the worth of music as
a means of expression. How great that means is I
need not explain. Some of you doubtless can enter
into that story of Mendelssohn when he was a boy.
When he had seen anything very beautiful, if he was
asked to describe it, he would say, " Oh, I can't speak
it, I will play it to you," and would then sit down and
' I Cor. xiv. 10.
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86 THE TEACHING OF SILENCE, [viii.
draw out of the instrument tones that expressed the
deep impression which the beautiful had made on
him. But we are not all so. Still all have some siich
power in some degree. We all, especially when we
are alone, express our feelings in some feeble lay.
Like some poor bird that trills its one simple note of
love unnoticed by man, but easing the fulness of its
httle breast, and doing what God places it for in the
world ; so amongst us, in our congregation, however
faint and low, still gloving hearts will always find some
voice to express their praise to God ; and music will
then be rightly used, most gloriously employed, and
the Church's service at the same time most hallowed,
when the best that we can accomplish sounds forth
from organ and from choir, and the influence of those
sweet sounds draws forth expression from the congre-
gation round, and all in heart and voice lift up their
souls in solemn praise to the glory of the Lord in the
holy temple of His house.
(3.) But, lastly, what has this to do with silence ?
A great deal. For all great works great preparation
is needed. And for the true preparation of the
music of the sanctuary silence is necessar}'. The
music we have been speaking of is the music of
worship, and the music of hearts. We render it here
in the temple of the Lord where He is ; and as we
acknowledge His presence, we hear the cry in our own
hearts, " Let all the earth keep silence before Him."
We come here to worship— to meet God, to deal with
Him. We bow before Him in supplication and con-
fession before we dare to praise Him. We receive
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VIII.] THE TEACHING OF SILENCE. 87
His gracious promise of pardon and release. Is not
silence the attitude in which to wait for this? "I
will hearken what the Lord God will say concerning
me : for He shall speak peace unto His people, and to
His saints, that they turn not again/' ' Surely silence
is the attitude of listening and attention. And
again, what is necessary in God's house? reverence.
" Keep thy foot," says Solomon, " when thou goest
to the house of God, and be more ready to hear
than to give the sacrifice of fools : . . - for God is in
heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy
words be few." ^ And again, silence is the condition
of real work — of most work with the hand, of all real
work with the head. The silence of preparation is
like a dam across a stream. That which would be
wasted in brawling itself noisily away among a
hundred petty obstacles in the stony valley, becomes
deep, and clear, and strong as it rests, in the lake
behind the barrier, a reservoir — source of life-giving
refreshment to thousands, source of well-directed
strength for work, whereby the earth may be made
glad and plenteous, and men be clothed and fed —
smooth and still, so that heaven itself becomes re-
flected in its unruffled calm. So in the silence of
thought, in the silence of humility, in the silence of
reverence, in the silence of deep feelings, in the
silence of earnest determination, we prepare an offer-
ing of prayer and praise, which wells forth, not from
the noisy utterance of our lips, without influence and
without expression, but a strong deep flood from the
' Ps. Ixxxv. 8. 2 Eccl. V. I, 2.
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88 THE TEACHING OF SILENCE, [viii.
heart itself, which flows, and will flow, on and on for
ever, which has God for its object, our own deepest
interest for its subject, our whole life for its channel,
and eternity for its end. The worth of this silence,
this self-denying silence of thought and preparation,
David knew : ** While I was thus musing, the fire
kindled : and at the last I spake with my tongue." '
The power of deep silence nature knows — in the awful
stillness before the tropical storm, when not a sound
is heard, and presently the thunder peals forth in all
its power, and the lightning in its wrath desolates
the earth. Or in the silence before sunrise, in the
quietude of the morning hour, while yet darkness
prevails, until, dressed in his glory, the majestic sun
arises, and the air is filled with the noise of life, and
** man goes forth to his work and to his labour until
the evening." Deep silence has preluded, how many
acts. The silence of the night preceded the Angels*
song that told when Christ was bom; deep silence
reigned around the Cross while Jesus finished re-
demption's work ; deep and solemn silence there is,
we are told, in heaven — ^there, in the very temple of
God, the silence of expectation, and of awe and
wonder ; and while that silence lasted the smoke of
the incense rose up before the throne of God, which
is the prayers of all the saints.'
Oh, brethren ! if we would tune our voices to sing
the songs of God aright, let us listen in silence to
catch that note of holiness, the note of a spirit that
holds communion with God ; without that note our
' Ps. xxxix. 4. * Rev. viii. i — 3.
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VIII.] THE TEACHING OF SILENCE, 89
sweetest utterances are discord in His ears. If we
would direct our prayers aright in any way, in the
business of life, in our social intercourse, in all our
works, oh, let us concentrate ourselves by silent pre-
paration and discipline, that we may improve evely
gift we have, that we may still have a strong and
steady stream of strength when the way becomes
long and the work ceases to be attractive ! Remem-
bering the presence of God, let us do all we do
heartily, as unto Him, and not unto men ; whether it
be that special work which comes before you to-day,
whether it be in the constant and earnest addition of
the offering of your own hearts and voices in the
services of God in this church ; whether it be in the
thousand complex actions which make up your life,
which, except on one plan are discordant, feeble,
harsh, variable, meaningless, worthless; but which,
turned to the one key of God's glory, make your life
one noble melody, weaving in, in mystic harmony, all
chords of joy and sorrow, difficulty and success, till
death puts in a rest, and after one more silence the
music bursts forth again, taken up by the choirs of
heaven.
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IX.
OUR CITIZENSHIP.
Philippians iii. 20.
Our conversation is in heaven ; from wheiue also we look for the
Saviour^ the Lord Jesus Christ,
This word conversation is that to which I would first
call your attention. It does not mean what to many-
it might appear to mean. By conversation we
commonly understand the interchange of thought
and words. Here we have something which involves
the whole course of our acts. Conversation, as we
commonly use the word, refers to our private life,
• and our less formal communications ; it does not
exclude the lightest topics or the most frivolous
behaviour. The real meaning of the word here is
best expressed by a term which with us represents
the development of public life : and it refers only
and entirely to things of the greatest possible import-
ance. For " conversation" read "citizenship," and you
have the nearest approach in one word to the Greek
vo\iT£Vfxcu That which in things of this world
represents your relation to your fellow-men— your
position in civilisation, in the right and art of govem-
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IX.] OUR CITIZENSHIP. 91
ment, your personal freedom, the safety of your life,
the sacredness of your home, the security of your
property, your measure of influence in the affairs of
your town, your government, your nation, the world.
All this is represented in the word " citizenship." Your
respect for your own or your neighbours' claims, your
share in the benefits of national prosperity or the
reverse; your sense of shame if your country is
humbled among the nations of the earth ; your pride
in the glory of any national triumph, in war, in pohtics,
in trade, in art. All these are yours by virtue of your
being a citizen. The respect in which your nation's
name is held is a light which shines on your individual
head : if your nation is betrayed, degraded, disgraced
among men, you must bear your share of the
contempt
And at the present day this very citizenship is
becoming more and more the subject of earnest
consideration. And men are talking fiercely, and
savage words are bandied to and fro, and evil motives
are freely imputed and reckless assertions made, and
society is stirred up to the very depths ; and not the
honest sons of toil, but the livers by sinful idleness,
claim their share in the disposition of events 3 and
some are impetuous and some are immovable ; and
loud voices scream above the storm, and quiet people
hold their breath with terror ; and all agree upon this
only — that at home and abroad, for weal and for woe,
it is a crisis we are passing through.
But, beloved, there is a lesson in all this. Men feel
or fancy — I am not gomg to take either side in this
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92 OUR CITIZENSHIP. [ix.
place — that they have this citizenship by right ;• that
they must and will have it, in fact. Hence they think,
they organize, they work.
And we too have a citizenship — ^a citizen's place, a
citizen's duties, a citizen's rights. We have it by
right, we have it in our power ; have we it in enjoy-
ment?
S. Paul and the early Christians had no need to
make this precautionary distinction. He and they
could say honestly, and without reserve, " Our citizen-
ship is in heaven." He, when he stood before the
council, made the same statement in even a more
solemn manner: "As a citizen I have lived in all good
conscience before [or with] God, unto this day," where
his citizenship in the state over which God presides
places in a still stronger light of holiness and import-
ance that which is described in the text as being
citizens in heaven.
Now S. Paul's application of this expression to his
own case will help us to see how far we are justified
in adopting it. He had surrendered all earthly pros-
pects for the sake of Christ. In the strongest words
which language can supply he repudiates the idea of
anything standing between him and Christ. This
Hebrew of the Hebrews, this enfiranchised Roman,
this citizen of no mean city, this political leader of
God's chosen people, this apt scholar, this rising
public man, gave up all — ^home, friends, prospects,
comfort, safety, all — for the sake of Christ, to live as
a wanderer, to flee as an outcast, to suffer as an evil-
doer ; and from his very prison-house he writes — such
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IX.] OUR CITIZENSHIP, 93
is the tremendous force of real conviction that it will
not recognise, and therefore overcomes, what might be
difficulties to others as well as to himself— from the
very prison-house at Rome he writes to urge others to
follow him, others to do and dare and suffer what he
has done, to walk so as they had him for an example
. . . for—an incontestable reason — " our citizenship is
in heaven." All our rights as men, all our hopes of
glory, all our calculations of profit and advantage, all
our nationality, all our patriotism, is centred in this,
that " we are citizens of a better country, that is, an
heavenly.'* By this fact he explains his life.
But he says sorrowfully, there are others. " For
many walk,'* he says, " of whom I have told you before,
and now tell you even weeping, that they are the
enemies of the Cross of Christ ; whose end is destruc-
tion, whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their
shame, who ** — here comes the key of their lives —
" mind earthly things.**
Which, oh, which of these includes you and me,
brethren? Is it not enough to bow the head with
shame, to think that in this place, at any rate, it should
be possible to ask such a question with anything like
cause ? Does it shame you, brethren, to hear it as it
shames me to ask it? or does it make you angry?
And if it makes you angry, are you angry with me, or
with yourselves, or with the Bible ? Angry because I
have told you the truth? or because the idea of
asking such a question is so unjust, so unfair, to any
who come to church, to any " who profess and call
themselves Christians"?
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94 OUR CITIZENSHIP, [ix.
Let us look and see. You will say perhaps, and very
truly, things are different now from when S. Paul
acted as we have said. The world frowned on him,
and on religion ; or the more plain-spoken society
turned upon these Christians and put them to death
whenever it could. Things are different now. The
world reads S. Paul's writings, or at any rate hears
them read. The world has Christian people at its
parties, and its races, and its amusements, and its
business : and in return the world will supply the
Christian intellect with books, will guide the channels
of Christian expenditure, will manage the affairs of
Christian states, will alter the status of Christian life,
will provide fuel for the fire of character to feed upon
in every place of occupation and position. Now, I
am not saying that all parties, all amusements, are
absolutely wrong. I am not saying that the duties of
life for a Christian involve an abstinence from all
public affairs. Far, very far from it. But it is just
because the respectable part of worldly pleasure is
so apparently harmless that it is so really dangerous.
If you are to be drowned, the result will be much
the same whether the liquid in which you are plunged
is the purest water or some (sweet though) deadly
poison. The process may be a few seconds shorter
in this latter case, but the result is the same. So in
worldly matters : the danger nowadays for profess-
ing Christians is the being drowned, more than of
being, in them ; or, if you will drop the metaphor,
being engrossed with them : the whole being — body,
soul, and mind — is taken up by them, and so those who
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IX.] OUR CITIZENSHIP, 95
begin by minding earthly things end with being
" enemies of the Cross of Christ." For the two states
are at variance — the kingdom of this worid and the
> heavenly city ; and those who are full of one cannot
have room in their hearts to love the other.
Therefore, brethren, there must be in all cases an
examination, in many cases an emptying of ourselves,
before we can say with truth that " our citizenship is
in heaven." Let the examination take some such
form as this : What do I really care for ? Among the
unemployed it may be nearly the same to say, on
what do I spend my money ? How often do I fast ?
How often do I refuse any worldly engagement be-
cause it deprives me of time to think about my soul ?
How often do I stop from buying something pretty,
either because I cannot honestly afford it, or because
the money should go for God's service ? Then again,
how bored I am with talk about the Church, about my
neighbour's spiritual condition, about the progress of
Christianity, about the meaning of sacred words I
often say, and solemn things that are often done.
How much more pleasant the study of politics or
sport 3 the result of an election or the starting of a
branch business j the getting a day's holiday, or the
doing something advantageous for my family. Now
remember, in putting these things so I am speaking to
those who profess to believe in Him who said, " Seek
ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and
all these things shall be added unto you," to those
whose cry ought to be with truth, " Our citizenship is
in heaven." Now, to bring the matter to a point, let
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96 OUR CITIZENSHIP, [ix.
US look at the other part of the text : and use that as
the real touchstone, to see to what state we really claim
to belong. It is possible to steer clear of many of
the difficulties I have just now mentioned, and yet to
be in great danger ; to fancy ourselves, and to be in
many ways, very religious, and yet to be grossly
deceiving ourselves. Our religion may be a blmd
that hides Christ from us— our longing for salvation
but the natural instinct of self-preservation : our
heaven simply a future scene of harmless self-
indulgence.
Now, what is heaven to us? what are our ideas
about it ? what does it contain for us ? what do we
expect from it ? Is it simply a place where we hope
never to have any more trouble? or is it in our
thoughts, as it is in reality, the place " where Christ
sitteth at the right hand of God"? Do you from it
" look for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ " ?
For you, Christ will have much the same place in
your earthly life as you allow Him to have in your
heavenly expectation. There are few practical points
in which the Church of the present day — I mean, of
course, in its individuals — errs so generally or differs
so widely from the Church of the martyrs as this.
We talk of Advent, we say it is the coming of Christ;
yet how little has that subject really entered into
religious life, or even religious teaching. The coming
of Christ 1 Mark the expression — not our dying ; that
is not His coming to us, but our going to Him. The
coming of Christ actually, visibly coming in the flesh,
to rule and reign over all things. If our citizenship
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IX.] OUR CITIZENSHIP, 97
is in heaven, that fact will be prominent with us as it
was with the early Christians. Read the New Testa-
ment. How little you find abfout death ; how much
about the coming of Christ How little about the
individual rescue, how much about the glory of our
Lord ; and where reference is made to the personal
salvation, still how it is made to reflect the exceeding
great glory of God. Are we sanctified day by day, made
holy, fitted for perfection? — "we are changed into
His image." Does S. Paul speak of his own marvel-
lous conversion ? — it was " that in me first, Jesus Christ
might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to
them which should hereafter beUeve on Him to ever-
lasting life." And this wakes up his joyous doxology.
If all we hold most dear is really treasured up beyond
the skies, if our home is there, our country there, our
Saviour there, and our heart there, then we too shall
be patiently waiting here as a temporary sojourn, and
earnestly looking for the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It will be not only that we shall eagerly long
for our own rescue from this world of sin and care, it
will be not only the rapturous thought of seeing again
those we have loved here ; it will not be the certainty
of no more change or danger — no, great as all these
will be, there will be something that will sway our souls
more than this ! The triumph cry, " The kingdoms
of this world are become the kingdoms of the Lord
and of His Christ," that will thrill through us with a
holy exultation to which the warmest glow, the hottest
pulse of earthly triumph or aff"ection will be cold and
stoical. " Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent
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98 OUR CITIZENSHIP, [ix.
reigneth," will be a more joyous shout to us even than
" I have fought a good fight, I have finished ray course,
I have kept the Faith." The success of Christ, the
triumph of all that is good, the banishment of evil,
the vindication of the Church, the overthrow of
scepticism, the silencing of scoff and blasphemy and
clamour, the establishment of the throne of Him who
is our Lord and Prince, our Saviour and our King.
A nation's greatness is a majestic thing : the power of
law and the voice of liberty, strength nobly used to
help the oppressed; the strong right hand to carry
out the wise decree; the gradual growth of intelli-
gence, and rectitude, and honour — all this is grand ;
^)ut grander far is the idea of that policy, the citizen-
ship of that heavenly state, which will never need a
remedial measure, for naught that offends can ever be
therein ; where there will be no disaffected citizen
within, no possibility of tumult from without : where
stands for ever and ever the reign of justice and of
truth, bound up with perfect love. This, or rather
that of which these or any words can be but a faint
and distant echo, Christ will bring with Him when
He comes. And come He will. Brethren, can you
pray that that coming will be speedy? Through
dangers abroad, through troubles and perplexities at
home, with infidelity mocking more and more boldly,
with vice outstripping even the gigantic strides of
material improvement: through storm and earth-
quake, through terror and despair, does it seem to
you that you hear the distant roll of those mighty
chariot wheels ? Are you longing. Christian, are you
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IX.] OUR CITIZENSHIP, 99
panting, are you desiring the deliverer to come : are
you thirsting for the hour when the world's tyrant idols
shall be broken, and Christ shall reign in righteous-
ness ? Are you capable of this desire, are you worthy
of it ? Have you prayed for it, have you thought
about it, have you hasted unto it, have you prepared
for it f Remember the close connection between the
citizenship and the coming. Realize the first and
you will believe the second. It is those to whom that
blessed city is revealed : it is those who see her as a
bride descending out of heaven : it is those who think
upon her glorious splendour, and trace that splendour
to its source, to "the Lamb which is the Light
thereof : " it is those who amidst all the upheaving of
the moral or material world, still hear the voice of God
breathing in the prayers which He teaches His people:
it is those who hear the Spirit and the Bride : the voice
of conscience, and the voice of the Church, who hear
them in their mystic prayer, and understand the long-
ings of the regenerated soul within themselves— it is
only those who so see and hear, that can with truth
join in that blessed prayer, the prayer of the redeemed
the prayer which marks the true Christian citizen in
heart, " Even so come. Lord Jesus." O brethren, can
you do that ? Can you without falsehood pray, " Thy
kingdom come " ?
H 2
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X.
THE DECAY OF FAITH.
S. Luke xviii. 8.
Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh^ shall he find faith
on the earth ?
Did Jesus Christ ever despond ? Did He who sighed
as He healed the poor deaf mute, look forward over
the ages and see before Him a world in which one
here and one there shall be rescued out of a perishing
multitude — ten cleansed and only one remain? Did
He foresee that His own most holy work, His own
most precious death and burial might effect all that
was needed, all that was possible, and yet the boon
be received with thanklessness except by one here
and there ? Did He who wept over Jerusalem sorrow
for a world that knows not the time of its visitation ?
Did He who groaned in His spirit and was troubled,
stand as mourner over the spiritual death of the world
He came to save? Did He who "was exceeding
sorrowful even unto death" feel the most crushing
pang of all — that in Himself and in His messengers
He stretched out His hands first on the Cross and
then through all nations, "unto a disobedient and
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X.] THE DEC A V OF FAITH, loi
gainsaying people " ? Undoubtedly all this was so.
But still I press the question I began with, Did Jesus
Christ ever despond ? When to all that we have said,
to all that knowledge of what we call failure vividly
present to His omniscience, was added the bitterest
trial of all to a loving and a tender heart : when He
saw His own people turning away from Him, when
** neither did His brethren believe on Him," and those
He loved deserted Him, and those He prayed for
murdered Him, when even His heavenly Father hid
His face from Him, did He despond ? When He who
was in all points tempted like as we are knew all these
things by the power of His Godhead, and felt them
to the inward centre of heart and brain in the reahty
of His manhood, did He despond ? Is the utterance
of the text an evidence that the work which the
tempter failed to do in the wilderness he was accom-
plishing in* the world — that Christ was wavering ? The
answer is one which rises with a world-wide chorus in
the voices of the redeemed, and which the shattered
dominion of the realms below owns as it falls subdued.
No, " Faint yet pursuing j '' existing in contradiction
to the laws which guide the world ; full of paradox,
yet sincerer than the noon-day ; strong in weakness,
rich in poverty, wise in simplicity ; conquering through
submission — returning love for hate, benefit for injury,
prayers for curses, rejoicing in tribulation, and living
through death ; such has ever been the character, the
conduct, the condition, the description of Christ and
the Church.
Had Christ ever wavered, the tempter had triumphed
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I02 THE DECAY OF FAITH. [x.
and we been lost But what did He mean, then, in
the words of the text? He meant a word of pro-
phecy, a word of warning ; and, strange as it may
sound, a word of comfort.
And, first, a word of prophecy. He knew what would
be. If S. Paul could Icnqw by the gift given to him
" that after his departure grievous wolves should enter
in among them, not spsgring the flock," how much
more did the Shepherd ajad Bishop of our souls fore-
see that many false prophets " shall arise, and shall
deceive many ; and that because iniquity shall abound,
the love of many shall wax cold " ? And with love,
faith. For the one cannot exist in the Christian with-
out the other. Was not the suffering anguish of the
early Church, and the los§ of those who fell away or
were deterred by persecution, clear before His aght ?
Did not His gaze pierce into the darkest recesses of
the middle age of the Church, and watch in sorrow
those that lay in ignorance there ? And does He not
see the reaction of trial now when in this present day
knowledge grows, whether wisdom lingers or not, and
a blaze of information with fitful and varying ligfet
here illumines and there bewilders? Does He not
see, did He not see, the special trial of this age — the
conflict between faith and yeason ; the quarrel wher«
indeed division ought never to have been, when worse
than in a man's household are his foes, where the
belligerent powers are both without himself, the two
noblest parts of his own pergonal being ?
What may we in a few words lay down as the
description of the present time ? An active spirit of
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X.] THE DEC A Y OF FAITH, 103
inquiry without patience. I pass over the material
aspects of the world of the present day. All that is
connected with the energy of commerce, or the afflu-
ence of inventive genius, or the vast political prob-
lems. I linger simply over the attitude of the intellect
towards our hereditary religion; I use that epithet
hereditary advisedly, because in the mouth of a
Churchman no candid person can mistake my mean-
ing, and there is no other, to my knowledge, which
would not be said to beg the question by opponents
on one side or the other. Now as to that religion
which has come down to us embalmed in the teaching
of the Prayer-Book, that interpretation of the Bible,
that is, which we hold to be the teaching of the Church,
what is the attitude of the mind of England at the
present day ? One whose opinion of us must be as
valuable as the opinion of a deserter ever is, accurate
and hostile, tells us that the majority of the Church of
England are simply Conservative, having neither heart
nor brains, but, for the sake of quiet, and to avoid
trouble, anxious to keep up the establishment of the
Church ; * some, yearning after doctrines which they
believe to be Catholic and true, are condemned as
disloyal to our Church, and, in the mind of the writer
I am referring to, not without reason ; others there
are, who for the sake of brevity we will call by their
familiar name. Broad Church, who are considered to
monopolise the remaining intellect of the Church ;
and between the two the remnant of the Evangelical
party, still outnumbering the others, but rapidly decay-
ing through the absence of any vivifying power, and
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IC4 THE DEC A Y OF FAITH, [x.
hastening to distribute itself between the other two.
There is an enemy's picture of us. But taking the
part of wise men, who will expect to find more truth
in an enemy's blame than in a flatterer's eulogy, let us
boldly examine the matter. Nothing is ever gained
by shutting our eyes to a difficulty. Oftentimes the
very statement of a fear proves that it was a nervous
fancy, or if the cause for apprehension be real, we
gain wisdom and calmness for dealing with it by
learning what it is. Taking the outline just sketched
as true, though we may object to the colouring, is it
a cause for thankfulness and satisfaction that a great
number of us are Churchmen we do not know why ?
Is that faith which knows nothing of its own object ?
Is that safety which lies down with its eyes shut, and
knows neither what the hedge is that surrounds it nor
what the nature and design of those who are prowling
outside ? Is it a satisfactory result that many many
thousands have no care for the Church to which they
belong, and consequently make no effort for its exten-
sion ; that many, too many alas, know not the bless-
ings of their own communion, nor the errors of others,
and thus drift off towards unbelief or superstition ?
And taking the multitude from all the different parties
equally, is not this too true a description ? Putting
aside those who are fanatical, those who, to use the
popular phrase, " run into extremes," what do we get ?
Here and there one who thanks the Saviour for bless-
ings received with the utterance of a life. Here and
there a little leaven working with some power on the
lump around it. Here and there the stars shining,
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X.] THE DEC A Y OF FAITH, 105
bright themselves, but unable to turn the darkness
around them from night to day. And press in, press
home — I am earnest in this matter, brethren, for I
believe it to be one of life and death — press on I say,
and examine further ; let us look to the princes in the
realms of thought ; let us study the fair intelligence of
the working classes ; let us hear the assertion boldly
made, there is too much faith in the world — let us see
that opinion lived, if not uttered, by tens of thousands ;
let us see the altered demeanour of the inquirers in
religious matters — the Burning Bush approached with
the tramp of confidence instead of the unsandaled
foot; the habitual absence of a large part of our
population from any place of worship whatever ; the
popularity of those who deny the inspiration of the
Word of God ; the number of those who assert that
there is no future state of existence, and even ot
those who doubt the being of God Himself. Taking
them as facts — and well would I that they were not
facts — is there no reason for the Church to feel — if this
is the tendency of the age, what will it be as these
things develop ? If this is the state of things now^
how will it be when the Son of Man cometh ? shall
He find faith on the earth ? Ay, and special reason
to feel this, for the faith here spoken of especially is
that faith which is perhaps of all others most repu-
diated now — the faith in the power of prayer, and
the answer of a God who waits that He may be
gracious to us.
I have not wilfully, I do not think I have at all,
over coloured the picture of the attitude of the
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io6 THE DECAY OF FAITH, [x.
present day. Is there not, then, a word of prophecy
in the question of the Lord ?
Secondly, But we must not sit still with the simple
intimation that things would be as they are now — that
this was foreseen, and inevitable. There is a word of
warning.
This question is asked by our Lord after a parable
in which He had been insisting that men ought always
to pray and not to faint. Always, under the most
adverse circumstances, in the face of the greatest dis-
couragements. The poor widow before the unjust
judge was the type of helplessness and the favourite
of despair, yet she would persevere, and she suc-
ceeded. Christ Himself, as we have seen, calmly
measuring the depth and breadth and length and
height of evil and its power, even in His humanity,
did not despond — He, our example, and she, the type
He puts before us in the parable, continue working.
And He calls on us to do the same — not only to cling
to the ancient landmarks of our faith, not only to
look forth from the walls of our spiritual Jerusalem,
answering never a word to the foes that menace or
that allure without ; but, far more than that, to work,
to work while we have the light, to exhibit the faith
that worketh by love, to press forward, to labour, to
carry on Christ's work among others, though we may
see no prospect of success, and in the judgment of
the world may lose our all in attempting it. Is there
faith in the world ? Are the kingdoms of the world
become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His
Christ?
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X.] THE DEC A Y OF FAITH, 107
What is the state of your own hearts and minds,
dear brethren ? Do not be afraid to examine ; there
begins your first work. To yourself Christ first
speaks, then : " When thou art converted, strengthen
thy brethren." Examine, I say, yourself, and the claims
of religion, and the signs of the times. Do not ima-
gine for a moment that I am advocating an ignorant
any more than an idle faith ; I do not say that an
intelligent; faith is desirable now : I say that it is ne-
cessary. Whatever there might have been once — an
atmosphere so quiet that no storms ever disturbed it—
now it is impossible to be out of the reach of ques-
tions, discussions, controversies. And if you avoid
them in public, or shun them in books, you cannot
keep them out of your mind. The tone of the day,
in its education and its habits, engenders the spirit of
inquiry; and inquiry is the parent of doubt; and
doubt, according as we deal with it, leads either to true
faith or to despair. Do I say doubt is a sin ? It is
rather a trial, an awful trial, when a man gropes in the
noonday — blinded as it were even by the light which
comes from God by religion in the road of life — and
seeks some to lead him by the hand ; when the earth
on which he stands seems to reel beneath him, and
the heaven on which he used to gaze, to vanish away
into an immeasurable void. To have believed in a
God who made him, and to find the very powers
which that God made proving to him, as he thinks, the
felsehood of their Maker's records ; to have believed
in a Saviour, God and man, and to find the ablest
thinkers and the readiest writers so distorting His
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io8 THE DECAY OF FAITH, [x.
language or disguising His features that he doubts at
last whether He existed at all ; to be driven back on
the voice within, as the utterance at least of a spirit
in communication with the Spirit of God, if it be not
that very Holy Spirit Himself, and to find that inward
voice testifying in opposition to many who seem the
best and holiest of men — ^these things let none de-
spise or condemn. But you whose faith is firm, pray for
those who suffer, as you would pray if standing on the
shore for your brethren out of reach of human aid,
who are struggling in the waves before you. And you
yourselves, brethren, if these words reach to any such,
oh, pray and work.
Trust me that few of this generation will reach
heaven without many dints on the shield of Faith,
placed as we are here with many of the trials of former
times removed, to prove against our unchanging foe the
reality of " the victory which overcometh the world,
even our Faith." But while on this part of the subject,
the warning implied in our Lord's question, let me
dwell for a few moments on the cause of the state of
things intimated by the text. If it be true that at the
present time the credulity of the infidel (would that
I had time to justify this expression, or to quote to
you the words of one who has well done so) shows
more vigour than the faith of the believer, what is
the reason of it? What is the origin of that exu-
berant growth of inquiry which we have already men-
tioned, which challenges every old truth, and which
in many cases, alas ! never gets an answer that quiets
it ? It is, if the truth be told, in a great measure
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X.] THE DEC A Y OF FAITH, 109
owing to the indifference of many minds. They have
never valued the truth they held. They had never
held in any real estimation the person or the love of
their Saviour-God ; they had never so realized the
unseen as to depend upon it for comfort, companion-
ship, or motive, and so never were in a position to
feel any sense of bereavement or spiritual desolation
at the thought of losing all that they must lose if they
lose their faith. And then, in addition to this indiffer-
ence, which is common to all the world, and to every
age of it, there is a special reason of these times which
works with the greater power because this indifference
leaves the mind without any champion to dispute its
pretensions. And that reason is — the great advance
in material and mental progress which year by year
develops itself. Men do more than their fathers did,
they learn more than their fathers did, they see the
results of their doing and their knowing ; and, resting
their gaze only on that which is nearest, they lose sight
of all else. The triumphs of science, of labour, of
enterprise, seem due to their own strength and keen-
ness ; and, as they look round on all that art has done
or science planned, they exclaim in effect with Nebu-
chadnezzar, " Is not this great Babylon that I have
built ... by the might of my power, and for the
honour of my majesty?" And material resources
grow more and more productive and intellectual energy
more versatile and more successful, and bold spirits
hint at results attainable which in comparison with the
present age will leave us in barbarian darkness, and
vindicate by their magnitude the true standard of the
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human mind. And little by little God is excluded
from their thoughts, and the things unseen are first
forgotten and then derided, and our worship gradually
absorbs all as the centre of all life, the object of all
thought and effort, as human nature is deified, not
in Christ, but in the individual man. Then Reason is
installed as sovereign, and Pride as her unholy consort ;
and when these are wedded, there springs up a brood
of thoughts and arguments and fancies which owns no
God but that which themselves can create and clothe
with attributes, and no faith which either logically
or religiously is worthy of the name. And the only
doubts which remain now are doubts on the ojther
side, the occasional misgivings of a bound and blinded
conscience, which, nevertheless, like Samson in his
prison-house, is gathering strength even in its degrada-
tion for one final destructive effort of condemnation
and despair.
Oh, therefore, brother, whoever thou art whose Faith
is tried, pray, while still you have a spark of Faith,
pray for humility; for ignorance is our condition
here, and weakness is our nature, and doubt our trial.
But the evidence of God's Word, confirmed in the lives
and deaths of millions who have trusted Him, tells us
that He sympathizes with our weakness, and gives
grace to the humble. But pride sets us in antagon-
ism to Him; pride stops our prayers to Him and
shuts out the approaches of His love to us, centres us
in ourselves, and consequently excludes the possibility
of Faith.
Thirdly, But, lastly, there is a word of comfort in
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X.] THE DEC A Y OF FAITH, 1 1 1
this question of our Lord's. If we find the state of
things that I have described : if we find a tendency to
a wider unbelief still, yet if all this was foreshadowed by
our Lord, there is a proof of His foreknowledge, there
is ground for confidence in His other predictions.
When all things are threatening and wellnigh hopeless
Christ is at hand. From the storm-tossed vessel we may
see Him on the waters and hear His gentle words,
" It is I ; be not afraid." One has reminded us how
God spoke by His prophet in the older dispensation :
that all shall be nearly lost, Jerusalem itself shall be
taken, the spoiler be in the streets, then suddenly, when
even hope seems fled, the Lord shall appear and stand
on Mount Olivet for the preservation of His people.
And in His keeping all are safe, and the weakest is
strong. Safe, as they can testify whom He has helped
when all human help was vain; peacefiil, as they know
whom He has sheltered fi-om the strong blasts of
passion or oi opposition ; humble, and yet confident,
as they thankfully acknowledge who have found in
Him the object of their most glowing hopes and the
employment and the reward of all their highest facul-
ties. He is our God. And the same Lord who has
intimated to us the world-wide overthrow of Faith, has
still told us the same shall persevere ; and that in all
our troubles and disappointments we must never faint,
for God will " avenge His own elect that cry day and
night unto Him, though He bear long with them."
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XI.
THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT.
S. Mark viii. 24.
And he looked up, a fid said, I see titen as trees^ walking.
Jesus had just led the raan who made this statement
out of the town. There must have been some special
reason for this, both as regards the man, and as
regards the town, or rather village. As regards the
man, it has been suggested that our Lord led him
there that the sights he should first look upon with
his recovered powers might be the open sky, and the
beautiful country, not the dust and discord of the
town ; or, with more force perhaps to recommend it,
the action was symbolical, showing how the Saviour
would always lead men apart from the world when
He is bringing them to and through any great crisis
in their souls : placing them in the solitude of sick-
ness or bereavement; or in the utter loneliness which
want of sympathy produces even in a crowd of
ordinary acquaintances, when the soul has begun to
long for the companionship of One alone, and turns
back chilled and disappointed by every intercourse in
which He is not spoken of or reflected. But besides
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XI.] THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT. 113
these considerations for the man there is also evidently
something to be sought in the village itself; for not
only does Christ lead the sufferer first of all out of
the town, but after the miracle bids him go to his own
" home, saying neither enter into the town, nor tell
it to any in the town." We are given no explanation
of this, but we remember that elsewhere it is reported
of Jesus that " He could there do no mighty work,
because of their imbelief ; " and we muse in sadness
on the thought, that even the very presence and word
of Christ Himself may be made powerless for good
by the unbelief of man.
But we turn to the miracle itself, and we notice
that point in it which especially distinguishes it from
all other recorded miracles of Christ. I mean the
gradual operation of it. As in other cases, Jesus led
the sufferer apart ; as in other cases, He made use of
certain means as well as of His word, teaching us
the method and the secret of sacramental working ;
but, not as in other miracles, the cure is gradually
wrought. Jesus *' asked him if he saw aught ; and
he looked up and said, I see men as trees, walking.^'
After that He put His hands again upon his eyes and
made him look up, and he was restored, " and saw
every man plainly."
I. Now, as to this mode of procedure, some say
that it argues that the man himself was infected with
the unbelief assumed to exist in the village : he was
brought to Jesus; he did not come of himself: he
was unable to receive the cure at first, and therefore
Jesus by His power gave him a glimmering light of
I
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114 THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT, [xi.
the external day, in order to quicken at once his
desire and his faith. Rather we would say it was
intended to teach us how God deals differently with
different souls; even as sometimes in bodily cures
He healed a man with a word or a touch, or sent him
to the priest, or bid him wash in Siloam, or opened
his eyes by degrees. It is a rebuke to those who
demand proofs of instantaneous conversion ; it should
• be read with that other passage, also peculiar to
S. Mark, which describes the growth of grace as
gradual, like the growth of the grain of com, "first
the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,"
which, while the man rises and sleeps night and day,
grows he knoweth not how.
II. Then as to the meaning of the particular words
in which the man describes his growth, " I see men
walking, but they look like trees." Large, indistinct,
crowded and hazy, like the mingled mass of the distant
woods waving and bending in the breeze ; or as when
passing rapidly along we see the trees flit quickly by
us in copse and hedgerow. The man had either never
seen, or had long been unaccustomed to, the form of
either man or tree ; his was therefore an utterance
doubly obscured ; his eyes only partially transmit-
ting objects which his mind only partially recognised.
Trench "On the Miracles" records a modern 'in-
stance which illustrates this : " A child blind from his
birth was cured. When he first saw he knew not the
shape of anything, nor any one thing from another,
however different in shape or magnitude ; but being
told what things were whose forms he before knew
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XI.] THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT, 115
from feeling, he would carefully observe that he might
know them again." The man in the text having thus
truly described his half-restored condition, Jesus
speaks to him a word of command : He bids him
look up, and then he sees all men clearly.
III. Looking at the spiritual meaning of this de-
scription, it has been urged that it is often the case
when the work of grace is beginning that people
mistake the nature and proportion of things around
them. Spiritual things and living truths still have
much of the earthly clinging to them : and if life and
movement is recognised at all, it is the dull vegetative
life of mere existence, still rooted in the soil of this
world, or spreading itself out in a hazy form of general
indefinite goodness, not the active, personal, organic
life of the regenerate man, which is part of the very
Hfe of God.
IV. But in any case it shows again, I repeat, brethren,
the gradual work of grace, and we notice a lesson
of honesty and humiHty in the man's description. He
does not claim an insight which he has not attained to
— he breathes the spirit of S. Paul when he said,
" Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended."
He speaks a lesson, gentle but severe, to those who
after hearing a sermon, or reading a treatise, or
attending a service, or feeling an awakening of con-
science, suddenly consider that they are converted,
that they " can read their title clear," that they have
clear views, and so forth. To such this gradually
restored blind man speaks a word of plain warning.
And lest I should be misunderstood to be aiming
I 2
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Ii6 THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT. [xi.
what I have said at any one class of religionists, let
me hasten to explain that this lesson is of very general
application; — the precocious child, who lectures its
parents or strangers on religion ; the converted prize-
fighter, who suddenly turns from indulging in all kinds
of brutal passions and le9tures his neighbours who
have been walking for years in the light on which he
has persistently turned his back ; the pert young man,
who picks up some ritualistic peculiarity, and super-
ciliously corrects those who may have for threescore
years been drinking in the deep draughts of religious
truth ; the uneducated convert, who has picked up one
text of Scriptiure, and on the strength of that ignores
all that others have learned of the rest of the whole
counsel of God, — all these in every part of the Church
may lay to heart the humility and truthfulness of the
man " who saw men walking, but could not distinguish
them from trees,'' lest they incur our Lord's condemn-
ation, "Now ye say, We see; therefore your sin
remaineth ; " and if they wish to spiritualize and put
into form the utterance that such a lesson should
suggest, will adopt the language of the agonized
father, " Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine unbelief."
V. And in this gradual development of the spiritual
powers there is also a strong and abiding word of
comfort for many a struggling Christian. Oftentimes
we find those who, though they are interested and
anxious, cannot obtain the steadfast gaze that they
desire. Clouds drive across their spiritual firmament ;
now all is clear and bright for a moment ; now the
fierce storm or the blinding mist sweeps over them
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XI.] THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT, 117
and their light is turned to darkness. They are not,
as they were once, either blind or careless ; the truth
has shone in upon their souls, but they cannot retain
it ; their conscience is tender, but their understanding
is dim : they feel after Christ if haply they may find
Him, fancpng He is far off when He is close beside
them ; they waver and are uncertain. Others seem to
have everything so clear, so assured, about their salva-
tion ; they see all sorts of difficulties. Others appear
to have made up their minds on every point, to have
no room for argument, no opening for doubt : they on
the other hand have no idea of the " proportion of
faith," they seem to see contradictions in God's love,
and even in the voice of the Church ; they have had
light enough to see the terrible danger on the edge
of which they were standing, they have not light
enough* as yet to press forward and escape to the
mountains where they may be safe. Let such take
courage ; they are just in the condition indicated by
the text, they see men walking as it were trees. But
One is standing by them whose voice once said,
" Let there be light," and who is Himself the true
Light that " lighteth every man who cometh into the
world."
And in order, my brother — if such an one as I have
described be here — that thou mayest see more dearly
how thou art to obtain the light thou desirest, turn
thine inward eye upon the meaning of this passage
again. How and when was it spoken ? It was after
Christ had begun to deal with the man. It was after
He had led him aside, after He had laid His hands
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Ii8 THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT. [xi.
on him, nay, taken him by the hand, after He had spat
upon his eyes. After this, Jesus asked him if he saw
aught. Yes, indeed he did, he saw, though imperfectly,
a great deal : though still so far from what he wished
to be and was to be, his present condition represented
all the difference between having sight and not having
it; and his answer represents the vague but honest
expression of the babe in the word, not yet versed in
comparing spiritual things with spiritual, and totally
destitute of experience as little things close at hand
will hide greater things at a distance, and even to the
uninformed refuse to take their proper places and
proportions, so with the half-enlightened soul : the
present, the immediate present, * seems everything;
some scruple, which to the stronger conscience would
be no scruple at all, bows down the sensitive; pre-
sent recollection of past sins in their immediate im-
portance shut out or even seem to dwarf the infinite
mercies of God ; truths apparently conflicting sweep
by in undistinguishable succession : between hopes
an(> fears, promises and threatenings, the danger of
excess or the danger of scantiness, presumption
and diffidence, superstition and scepticism, the soul
is bewildered, and replies to its conscience upon
self-examination in an utterance, honest indeed,
representing truly enough its own perceptions, but
widely missing the true estimate of the truth itself.
In such a transition state, what help is there ? what
help does the Word of God ' before us present ?
Follow on the same method and the same guidance
which has brought thee so far. Having come to
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XL] THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT 119
Jesus, having been induced perhaps by a friend to
think on Him and pray to Him, He has led thee out
of the town. He has told thee that thy past associa-
tion — of the earth, earthly — ^hindered even His mighty
working. He allured His Church into the wilderness,
that He might speak comfortably to her : He has
led thee aside ; He has taken the blind by the hand ;
He has spat upon the darkened eyes. That is. He
has brought thee within reach of those streams of
life which flow from Him through His Incarnation :
those forces of actual life which radiate from Him,
and touch the very nature and being of those to
whom He comes to heal them : in other words. He
has led you from the World to the Church, and
touched you by His Sacraments : the washing of the
one Sacrament, the feeding of the other, have been
the means by which the defilement of your own
nature has been done away, and the power of Christ
been imparted to you instead of your own weakness.
The blind man spoke as in the text after Jesus had
dealt so far with him. You who have been not only
baptized and confirmed, but have earnestly worshipped
and reverently communicated, you are different, widely
different, from what you were once; but widely
different also from what hereafter you shall be.
Christ has led you to self-examination : the result is
at once to excite your thankfulness for His marvellous
work, and your humiliation for your own shortcoming.
But He still is standing by you — still in His House
apart from the city's noise He is bending over you as
you kneel : still to your soul His voice is speaking ;
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120 THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT, [xi.
Still on His altar He waits for you, that again He
may lay His hands upon you, again He may bid you
lift up your hearts. And in His house, and through
His words, by the voice of His Church and the
power of His Sacraments, He will free you from the
bondage a^d the blinding power of sin, and quicken
all those faculties which have so long been paralysed
or misused.
Brethren, don't you desire this ? Do you not every
one of you desire a clearer insight into the things of
God, and of your own peace ? Have you no proof
that God has in any way dealt with you ? Do you
see nothing that was once hid from you ? Has not
the thick darkness around Calvary cleared away at
any time to show you, even for a moment, the bleeding
form and the d)dng agony of a Love that could yet
never die ? And through the gloom around has there
not come a ray of gloiy, gilding earth with something
of heaven — pouring its flood of light upon your
dazzled but no longer sightless soul, bathing the altar
with its loving glow, and enabling you to see that He
who died as it were afar oflf for you both in time and
distance, still is at this moment near in all the
Churches of the Saints, and suffers you in the
ministry of His Church to plead in the sacred ele-
ments the Sacrifice of His Death, and to see Him and
to know Him in the breaking of bread ?
Take His own way, and He will make all things
clear in His own time. He led the blind man out of
the town that He might heal him, went Himself
without the city that He might die for you. Follow
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XI.] THE CLEARING OF THE SIGHT, 121
Him oat of the town, that, standing apait from the
world, yom- eyes may be opened, and you may see
Him die ; listen to each warning voice of conscience,
and in honest self-examination acknowledge the
faultiness of yom- present state; and listen to His
voice, that you may look unto Jesus and press on
unto perfection, that as He has been the Author, so
He may be the Finisher of your Faith.
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XII.
OUR CALLING.
Ephesians iv. I, 2, 3.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk
worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, tvith all lowliness
and meekness, with long-sufferings forbearing one another in love ;
endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,
S. Paul describes himself truly as one who "la-
boured more abundantly than they all." Yet it is very
seldom that he appeals to the greatness of his works
as being any claim upon the S5anpathies or support
of his fellow-men. However greatly he may be in
need, he never appears to command that which he
may desire at the hands of others. On the con-
trary, he entreats; sometimes "by the mercies of
God," sometimes as " being such an one as Paul the
aged," sometimes by appealing to that which may
seem humiliating, to many minds repellant, in himself.
If he ever in a holy enthusiasm forgets himself for a
moment, and narrates the mighty triumphs which he
had been the instrument of achieving, in a moment
he corrects himself, adding in profound humility, "yet
not I, but the grace of God which was widi me."
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xu.] OUR CALLING, 123
In this course of action he was following the
greatest of examples, he is obedient to the distinctest
of teachings. Therefore, when we find him address-
ing the exhortation of the text to the Ephesians, he
is pressing a precept which he himself has practised ;
he is endeavouring to teach his flock what he has
learned from Christ himself. For Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, the Saviour of the World, laid down, in
clearer terms even than Solomon, that "before honour
is humility.'* He not only abased Himself, not only
suffered indignity and shame and persecution, but
declared how He did it voluntarily and on principle >
and told His followers for ever that the true secret
and source of Christian greatness is rooted in the
deepest humility. And He who taught in word and
in act that "he that would be greatest among you
must be your minister, and he that is chief as he that
doth serve," speaks here by His apostle. The greatest
of human labourers in the greatest of all works appeals
to those who have the highest of all callings, and bids
them be worthy of nobility by the most complete
self-abnegation and humility.
At the first glance there is something contradictory
in this. There is often in Christ's words : " He that
will save his life shall lose it ; " " Many that are last
shall be first, and the first last;" and so on. But
there should be nothing surprising in this. If there
be, it is because we fail to recognise a great principle.
And we do fail to recognise it, or we forget it when
we have recognised it, very often. The contradiction
is not in the sayings of our Lord ; but in the circum-
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124 OUR CALLING, [xii.
Stances which make our lives. We really live in two
worlds. The world, the outward world around us,
which we are in by our fatal birth — the heavenly
world, to which we belong in virtue of " the vocation
wherewith we are called." The world of Sense, and
sin, and time, and death — the world of Faith, and
holiness, and eternity, and life: and these two are
contrary the one to the other. The one we have
(strange thought, alas!) renounced; the other we
declare that we are seeking. The one is sometimes
in open and violent hostility to the other ; sometimes
by the cunning of one and the weakness or treachery
of the other they are outwardly allied ; but when they
are, it is a strange union, like that of Herod and Pilate
over an insulted Christ; a state of things worse,
because more false, than that when the opposition of
the world and religion culminated in the crucifixion
of the Lord, when vox populi was mors Dei^ when
the voice of the multitude spoke its plain meaning,
and demanded in guilty ignorance the death of God.
And that there is this difference between the pursuit
of the world and the vocation of Christ the Church"
recognises in the institution of Lent. Then she bids
us bethink us where we are, and whom we serve.
Then she would utter a word of warning to those who
have been almost carried out of their depth by the
waves and storms of this world, troublesome in its
pleasures as well as in its trials ; then she echoes to
her faithful ones, buffeted and wearied, the invitation
of Jesus, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert
place, and rest a while."
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XII.] OUR CALLING, 125
Let US look at the text with this view; viz. the
desire to find in it some indication of how Lent is to
be kept We are justified in choosing it this day, for
it breathes so strongly the same spirit as the Epistle
for the Day.
Now, first, we turn again to the speaker, " I there-
fore, the prisoner of the Lord." An offensive word
at once — a prisoner, in a twofold sense — the prisoner
of the Lord ; the prisoner convicted by the world of
the offence of loving the Lord, and serving Him and
preaching Him ; therefore placed literally in captivity
by that world that could not abide the plain and
honest preaching of the Gospel of Christ The
prisoner of the Lord in another sense : belonging to
the Lord, led captive by Him, bound to Him; but
how ? Ey the strongest of all bonds' to a noble heart,
by the bond of love; called by love, he embraced
that service which is perfect freedom. He left for
ever that fancied liberty which was the bondage of
corruption. Again the servant echoes the Master's
language.. The Master says to those who declared
they were never in bondage to any man, " Whoso
committeth sin is the servant of sin;" and S. Paul
repeats, "ye were the servants of sin," but adds,
" being made free from sin, ye became the servants of
righteousness."
This prisoner, then, bound by the iron, fetters of
man but free in spirit, bound by the fetters of grate-
ful and adoring love to Christ, appeals still to the
world. Such as he is, he speaks to the proudest,
wealthiest highest bom; he would have them all such
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126 OUR CALLING, [xii.
as he IS, except the chain of his worldly captivity.
And the prisoner once spoke to kings; now he speaks
to all, prapng you to " bring every thought into cap-
tivity to the law of Christ."
II. Praying you. Yes. But who, permit me, brethren,
to ask, are you? Supposing the question asked at
hazard, and audible answers to it given, either in
church or out of church, I think very few would give
an answer suggested by the text. Would to God that
I might be mistaken ! But I fear that, just as among
those who are avowedly careless, or positively hostile
to the truth, the central error is forgetting who and
what God is, so among professing Christians the fruit-
ful source of evil is forgetting who we are. We are
"the called." We are those to whom God has spoken.
We are in the same position as those to whom the
words of the text were written; we are called, we
have a vocation. That Church at Ephesus, while it
contained many an earnest Christian, and shone bright
with Christian graces, yet was no more free from the
imperfections of humanity than the Church, for in-
stance, at Corinth, where open and scandalous faults
were committed by its members. The Epistles of S.
Paul were all addressed to the whole Church, the
entire body of professing Christians in each town or
place; and they, whatever the shades of their indi-
vidual character, were addressed in virtue of their
baptismal union as " the Saints," " the called," " the
elect," "the Church." Now, brethren, you, as bap-
tized men and women, are called, have a vocation;
you are in covenant with God; you cannot be as those
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XII.] OUR CALLING, 127
who have not been so received by Him. You may
break or ignore the covenant; it has been done before.
Eli broke the covenant of God by his carelessness,
his sons broke it by their open profligacy ; you may
break it too by neglect or wilful sin ; but so siu*e as
it is broken, upon everyone that breaks it, upon the
successful sinner or the dying apostate, upon every
promising scheme of worldly undertaking or every
lieart-sickening failure, there is written in letters of fire
by the finger of God — unseen perhaps in the glaring
day of prosperity, but shining with a more terrible
clearness as the dark night of death or adversity
approaches — " Ichabod ! " the Glory is departed — the
glory which was once yours by the ownership and the
indwelling of God ; the glory which the eternal Son
had with the Father before the world was, which, my
brother. He promises, nay, has promised, to share
with you and me in the kingdom hereafter.
III. Then how shall we appeal to you but in the
language of the text, to "walk worthy of the vocation
wherewith ye are called.'* The Spartan mother, when
her son went forth to join his country's armies in his
first campaign, said simply to him, " Sparta owns you,
add honour to her;" and never but as a conqueror
did that son return alive. The Church of Christ
owns us ; how far do we adorn the doctrine of God
our Saviour in all or in anything? How often do we
return day after day to the shelter of our Mother, the
Church, stained with the soils of flight ; our shield of
faith cast away to aid our hasty retreat, our very
name denied, our privileges repudiated ; the van-
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128 OUR CALLING. [xii.
tage ground of our baptismal calling and sacramental
grace denied to please an incredulous world ; every-
thing surrendered but our sins, nothing gained but
shame ! And then we come here ; and we go forth
again, after a service scant of heart-devotion, to pro-
fess ourselves again "attached members," or to warble
about "our beloved Church;" forgetting that such
membership or such love is in reality a pledge to be
faithful unto death; to fight manfully under Christ's
banner against sin, the world, and the Devil ; to quit
ourselves like men ; to be strong in the strength of
Christ
But if, instead of this listless attendance on divine
worship and this soulless profession of Churchman-
ship, we desire to follow the Apostle's advice, and
walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called,
if we wish to be more than conquerors of the world
and sharers and wearers of a more than earthly crown,
how are we to march forth ? What ensign shall we
wear, what stamp of nobility, what mark of greatness,
what watchword nerve our souls, what feeling kindle
the fire of our eye as we march grandly forward,
soldiers of Him who shall rule the nations with a rod
of iron and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel?
How, in a word, may we walk worthy of the vocation
wherewith we are called ?
In all lowliness and meekness — Oh, what a con-
trast ! What a contradiction, if we measure things by
the world's standard ! But no contradiction at all if
we remember that we are not servants of " the Prince
of this world," whose darling sin is pride, but followers
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XII.] OUR CALLING, 129
of Him whose vocation, whose calling, is "Come mitt)
me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden ... for I
am meek and lowly in heart" Look again, with all
lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering. If these
are the marks of our vocation, how different are they
from the avocations of the world. They start as in
a race where our sole object is to advance Self. Jesus
marked in His day how men chose the chief seats in
the synagogues and the uppermost room at feasts;
and how true is the description >still. Ay, literally in
God's house, for conspicuous or commodious places
there ; literally in society, for rank and precedence :
and how true still in spirit, in the essence of every
maxim of the code of worldly wisdom.
And if we go to the second head, to the long-
suffering and the forbearing one another in love, is
that the conduct of the world? Long-suffering, for-
bearing one another in love. We hear of it certainly
in the wtrld, not unfrequently. But how? In the
•mouths of those who are boasting of the long-suffering
under some petty grievance, that they may justify to
themselves and to the world their speedy adoption ot
the hasty or the overbearing. Not that there are no
good offices done in the world by worldly people;
but why are they done? Out Lord tells us the
motive, "Sinners also lend to sinners to receive as
much again." Bow down ta the successful and envy
him ; flatter the powerful, and slander him as soon 2&
it is safe ; make use of the simple, and then ignore
them ; put others forward to do disagreeable actions,
and if they succeed take the credit; do much for
K
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I30 OUR CALLING, [xii.
show, and little for charity; and all the time, "so
long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak
good of thee." And they who act so represent unre
generate, and also unconverted, human nature; and
they make up, to say the least, a large proportion of
the world we live in, " the crooked and perverse gene-
ration," as one Apostle calls it, among whom he bids
us live " as lights in the world." And day after day,
month after month, we have to live in the world ; to
find our trials in it, and our spheres of labour, ay,
and our pleasures too ; to be buffeted by it, too often
to be drenched and saturated with its influence. And
many Christian people you find day by day who are
dissatisfied with their life in it, who feel that things
jar; they tell themselves constantly that they are
doing their duty, though conscience tells them in
return that it is a lying tale ; they tell themselves and
others that they are leavening society, when in reality
society is leavening them; instead of reforming the
world, they are insensibly being conformed to it;
instead of walking worthy of the vocation wherewith
they are called, they are " following the generation of
their fathers ; " they are making peace with the world
that dwells at ease and is " at enmity with God.'*
Then, brethren, to such at such a time comes the
invitation of our Church. There is outside the rush-
ing stream of worldly life; there is close to it the calm
of a religious life. It is hard at times to make a
beginning, but here is an invitation. Leave for a while
that world, which has had, if not your hearts, at any
rate your interest, so long. In quiet retirement you
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XII.] OUR CALLING, 131
shall leam to practise lessons that the world can never
teach; with your faculties absolved from amusement
and excitement, you will be able to study Christ with
an undivided power; with your time rescued from
the avocations of the world, you will have a holy
leisure to think upon your precious soul; with ex-
penses reduced through cutting off luxuries from your
table, your recreations, your toilet, you will have more
to spend on Christ's Church and Christ's poor ; with
yourself mortified through denying your bodily tastes,
you will find your soul, lightened from its burden, rise
heavenward with a bolder flight; with your spiritual
vision cleared by all these things I have mentioned
you will form a truer estimate of the condition of
your soul and your distance from heaven.
Brethren, I do not want to utter any conventional
truism about Lent and fasting. I want to say, by the
grace of God, something that may touch the hearts of
men of business and women of pleasure, something
that may lead all to see that Lent is a great oppor-
tunity offered for growth in grace; a time that may
lead the idle to think about their Father's business ;
a time that may provide for the hard-working and the
weary a call to rest with Christ.
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XIII
ALMS AND ALMS-BAGS.
S. Matthew xxviii. 9.
And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.
I SUPPOSE that few people would wish to assert that
anything which is composed of human elements and
guided in any degree by purely human motives can be
perfect — that the Church of Christ for instance, the
most perfect of things upon earth, inasmuch as it has
most in it of what is not earthly, still has not, whilst
this dispensation lasts, the elements of division, corrup-
tion, and decay.
And that from the earliest times. If ever we might
have expected that there would have been unanimity
and perfection of joy, it would have been at the first
Easter-tide. But even then how soon was the declara-
tion of, the text followed by the other "they wor-
shipped Him," " but some doubted ; " and in S. Mark
even more strongly we read that "Jesus upbraided
them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because
they believed not them which had seen Him after He
was risen.'*
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XIII.] ALMS AND ALMS-BAGS, 133
I am not going to follow out this thought at any
length ; but as I took the Church as the instance of
that which was most likely to approach perfection of
things on earth, and selected the time immediately
after the Resurrection as illustrating most completely
the absence of that perfection, so in that Church I
will choose the employment which ought to be the
holiest and best, and show how, even at the time when
we ought to be most in tune for joining heartily in it,
there are serious imperfections. I mean of course the
employment of worship.
After our Lord's Resurrection, " the disciples came
and held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him."
At Easter we would approach at any rate to His feet ;
if we cannot realize the brightness of His revealed
Person in heaven, we would draw nigh when the
skirts of His glory fill the earthly temple. We would
come and worship Him. But how ? I would with all
deference assert that few things are less understood
by Christians than worship. The dignity of it, the
privilege of it, the joy of it, the claims of it upon you.
Worship is the rendering of ourselves to the object of
our worship. It is not receiving either advice or
benefits frona Him, It is that which the inferior
renders to the superior ; the superior renders a favour
or grace ; the inferior renders worship. It is all that
we men can render to God. This has been much lost
sight of. Here below it must needs be imperfect ; for
whilst here there will always be mixed motives, and
half-grudged tributes. But it is made, unhappily, almost
on principle, more imperfect than it need be. The
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134 ALMS AND ALMS-BAGS. [xiii.
prominence given to the sermon has done a great deal
to annihilate worship. The coming to hear, instead
of to pray and to praise. Romanism buried to a
great extent the preaching of the Word : Protestantism
has too much tendency to scare away worship. Our
Mother, the Church of this land, who is both Catholic
and Protestant, would unite the benefits of each,
would provide for the reading and the preaching of
the Word of God: and equally, or even more, for
the offering of prayer and praise and thanksgiving.
But do we respond? We are learning it by degrees,
but only by degrees. I have seen a newly-restored
church, where the seats were so arranged that sitting
was most comfortable, kneeling was literally impos-
sible. I do not say this was done on purpose. But
it was not found out till the day of the opening, and
could not be altered till afterwards. It showed that
the architect made all provision for hearing the sermon:
that even the clergyman forgot to see that provision
was made for praying. I don't think, though this was
not many years ago, that the same mistake would be
made now ; things have mended. But still, where are
we in the matter of worship? What are our ideas
about it ?
We said it was the rendering all that the inferior
can render to the superior. Between us men and our
God it^ the "rendering ourselves, our souls, and
bodies," that S. Paul tells us is "our reasonable
service." You see each part is provided for. The
inward thought and motive, the intention to do all to
the glory of God : the outward expression, whether of
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XIII.] ALMS AND ALMS-BAGS. 135
word or deed ; the body chaste, temperate and sober
for God's sake, the mouth making confession unto
salvation ; the life in an attitude of grateful submis-
sion to God. This is general.
Then comes the special act of worship. The invita-
tion is sounded, " O come, let us worship and fall
down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. " Brethren,
without kneeling, one part of worship fails entirely.
There will be no praying. And for this reason : be-
cause of the motives that keep men from kneeling.
Stephen kneeled down even in the pitiless storm of
stones that were hurled against him ; Paul kneeled
down on the sea-shore at Miletus with the elders;
Jesus our Lord kneeled down in the agony in the
garden, and prayed ; why don't we do as they did ?
Because we are shy, or because we are lazy, or because
we are afraid of spoiling our clothes. Brethren, these
are not trifles ; a little piece of iron two inches long
on the rails where a train was passing at full speed
would hurl it to destruction, and imperil hundreds of
lives. These little things divert you from the employ-
ment of worship : or rather, they show that such little
things as I have said come to you at such a time with
sufficient force to induce your compliance with them,
that they are more vividly present than the thought of
your sins, or your needs, or the meaning of what you
are saying, or God.
There are many sides of worship ; this is only one,
and I have only touched on it It might be more
pleasant to try and paint with poetic fervour the
glories of the seraphic worship around the throne of
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136 ALMS AND ALMS-BAGS, [xiii.
God on high, is it not more profitable to examine
some of the things that mar our worship in the courts
of God's throne on earth ? Let me then draw atten-
tion to one other point. I spoke in the last of the
Holy Week lectures on the subject of almsgiving, and
tried to show how it is not an accidental thing to be
done now and then, but a necessary part of worship ;
that the offertory is not simply a machinery for pro-
curing money for specific purposes, but a means of
testifying our wish to dedicate all our substance to
uses which are profitable and harmless, and to testify
by a practical exhibition that love for our brother
without which it were well for us not to draw nigh to
God. Let me dwell on that again. Almsgiving is a
part of worship ; not only alms to the poor directly,
but alms for the maintenance of anything belonging to
God — His house, His ministers, work for His Church
at home and abroad, hospitals for the body, missions
for the soul, and so forth. When Judas objected to
the waste of emptying the precious ointment on the
feet of Jesus, he received small praise. And we per-
haps by the practice of almsgiving habitually, might
find a means of holding Jesus by the feet ; drawing
near to Him humbly, ministering to Him, worshipping
Him.
But here again what do we do ? I am not asking
for a special collection, brethren, to-day, though money
is much needed ; but I am speaking about the habit,
as a moral and religious act, bearing on your own
soul's condition and evidencing your attitude towards
God. In the address I put out at the beginning of
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xiiL] ALMS AXD ALMS-BAGS. 137
Lent I said, diat though the offertory shows an in>
crease year by year, still it is discreditable to the
majority of the congr^ation. It is hardly credible,
and yet I say it emphatically, that even with this con>
gr^ation, were it not — I will not say the Hberality, for
I wish to dismiss the idea of there being any liberality
in the matter — ^were it not for the religious feeUng and
constancy of a comparatively small number, we should
have to give up the evening service in the winter
months entirely. More than half tlie congregation
every Sunday put nothing into the bag ; of a Sunday
evening a bag which has been taken down the whole
side of a church comes back with two shillings, three
shillings, sometimes only a few pence. I am not sur-
prised at the language which, two Easters running, I
have found on a piece of paper put into the bag on
the Sunday evening and enclosing a sovereign; the
words of the unknown donor are these, " From a
poor free sitter, who is ashamed of the bags," and one
other point, we find also in the bags pieces of foreign
coin, bad money, imitation trinkets.
Now what gives these matters sufficient importance
to be brought forward in a sermon ? Not the simple
question of supply ; nor the illustration they afford of
the work of Voluntaryism as a principle, about which
we hear a good deal just now : but because a much
greater principle is involved. We should not see the
braided hair, the costly jewels, the sumptuous apparel;
we should not see the places filled by crowds of
visitors — ^the free side of the Church especially I speak
of— and the miserable pittance returned, if we realized
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138 ALMS AND ALMS-BAGS, [xiii.
the idea of worship — if we came not to pay accord-
ing as we were pleased by music or stirred by a ser-
mon, but on the principle of the Bible invitation,
" Give unto the Lord the honour due unto His name :
bring presents and come into His courts, and wor-
ship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." We should
be free then from the stigma of offering unto the Lord
our God of that which costs us nothing. If we could
only realize that the Lord is in His Holy Temple,
that we give as unto the Lord, we should tremble
equally at the idea of uttering to Him words of prayer
or praise that we did not mean, or of professing a
homage that we do not offer, or of acting a devotion
that we do not feel, or of sacrificing the blind and
lame, and giving Him what we do not particularly
care about keeping for ourselves.
Let us realize His presence — ^believe that really He
died, really He rose, really He is interceding in
heaven, really He is present on earth, and specially
in these His hours of prayer ; and then will come, not
the forced tribute of an active homage, but the ready,
the practical, the unmistakable expression of the
deepest devotion, that longs to devote itself entirely
to the Saviour's glory, that craves to touch if it be but
His feet or the hem of His garment, so that it may
be near Him, so that it may see Him by faith, nay,
have Him by faith, nay, acknowledge with all its
powers how great things God has done for them.
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XIV.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION.
S. John xiv. 28.
If ye loved me^ ye would rejoice^ because I said^ I go unto the
Father: for my Father is greater than L
Every Festival of the Church, except Michaelmas and
All Saints, is commemorative of some special person
or action. The fervour with which we observe these
commemorations is measured by the importance we
attach to the original act or person. But the import-
ance we attach is not always the importance attached
by the Church nor by Christ. For instance, we
observe Easter with the greatest outward demonstra-
tion of religious joy of all the Festivals ; which is
quite right. We observe Christmas with a very large
amount of social merriment mixed up with our religious
feeling; and I do not say that we are wrong. But
we come to other Festivals, and we pass them by
almost entirely, though every mark which the Church
can give to the day and every testimony which the
Bible can give to the original circumstance points
it out as clothed with all the radiance that should
wake in us the most heartfelt joy.
Among these notably is Ascension Day. Notice
briefly, first of all, how the Church marks it. In the
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140 THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION, [xiv.
ordinary worship there are special Lessons, as is
the case with many Festivals ; special Psalms, as is
the case with very few. The Athanasian Creed is
appointed to be said or sung, that great oriflamme of
the Church's warfare which is brought out as it were
to rally the faithful, and sift the earnest from the in-
different believers; and in the Sacramental worship
there is a proper Collect, Epistle, and Gospel ; and
a proper Preface to be used at Holy Communion on
Ascension Day and every day throughout the Octave.
It is melancholy to own it, but there are many who
never heard this or any other part of the Eucharistic
Service proper ; and I will therefore read it fo you, that
you may see what is commemorated specially at the
Holy Feast that day : " It is very meet, right, ^nd our
bounden duty, that we should at all times and in all
places give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Holy Father,
Almighty Everlasting God, through Thy most dearly
beloved Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who after His
glorious Resurrection manifestly appeared to all His
apostles, and in their sight ascended up into Heaven
to prepare a place for us ; that where He is, thither
we might also ascend, and reign with Him in glory."
And not only on the day itself does the Church place
these marks of eminent honour, but she prepares her
children beforehand to approach this lordly festival
aright. As Advent comes before Christmas, as Lent
comes before Easter, so Rogation-tide comes before
Ascension Day ; and three days of Fast and Prayer
are appointed, that we may enable our souls to con-
template aright the wonder of the Ascension, and
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XIV.] THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION. 141
that our fervent desires for all blessings, temporal
and spiritual, may ascend in freer utterance with our
ascending Lord.
But why all this ? Are these all arbitrary forms, or
have they a meaning and a reason? They have a
meaning and an object justified by an utterance
great ereven than that of the Church, viz. the Word
of our blessed Lord Himself. He lays down the
principle, the meaning, and the reason ; the Church
shows us in detail how to follow out His leading.
"If ye loved me," He says, making the tenderest
of all appeals, " ye would rejoice because I said I go
unto the Father; for my Father is greater than I."
Christ tells us that we shall rejoice and why, the
Church shows us how. He tells us then that we
should rejoice on account of his going to the Father,
and bases this upon two things — right feeling and
right knowing ; the right feeling is in ourselves. Love
to Him ; the right knowing has the Highest of all fpr
its object, and is Faith toward the Father.
On these two principles the doctrine of the Ascen-
sion, and, as a necessary consequence in religiously
instructed minds, the observance of Ascension Day
rests.
I. Love to Christ. Christ said the words of the
text, and many other words in the same great dis-
course, about His departure from earth and His
disciples; and bade them rejoice over it But they
were sorrowful.
Now, there are two kinds of love. Love for another
which is intensely selfish, and love which is purely
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142 THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION, [xiv.
unselfish. The first is the love of the ordinary human
heart for its fellow ; the second is Christ's love to us.
The first has for its highest aim the possession and
enjoyment of the object loved ; the other has for its
aim the real good of the object loved. The one
longs for the society of its beloved, to hear the voice,
to see the face, to be in the company ; it will take
trouble, sometimes a great deal of trouble, make
sacrifices, wait and labour, that it may win or retain
a corresponding passion in the heart of the beloved,
and views as the greatest of all ills death or any other
circumstance which severs it from its beloved, because
of its own loss. It is a love which appears outwardly,
at times chivalrous and even heroic ; but it is a love
which really numbers among its representatives the poor
faithful dog which refuses to leave its master's grave.
But the other love rejoices with an equal fervour
in the presence of the beloved; longs for it with a
force of desire all the stronger because it is pent up
and restrained, not wasted in idle sentiment; but,
beyond and above its own pleasure in the beloved,
longs for that dear one's real good ; and would sacri-
fice itself even to the extent of parting if that sepa-
ration produced a greater good for the object of its
affections. It pours out itself even to death for the
good of the other; it spares nothing; it earnestly
desires the love of the other in return, but loves on,
hopes on, works on, suffers on, although that love be
denied or its place occupied by hate.
Which of those kinds of love is Christ's love for
the disciples ? Which was the disciples' for Christ ?
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XIV.] THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION. 143
They had heard His words, they had felt His kind-
ness, they had reposed in His presence, and now He
talked of leaving thena. They could not bear it,
sorrow had filled their hearts. It does not seem that
they sorrowed because of the sufferings He was about
to undergo; they seem to have been wonderfully
incredulous, or wonderfully insensible about these,
even to the last. They sorrowed simply because He
had told them He should leave them ; and whilst this
sorrow does not seem to have been moved by the
prediction of His sufferings, so neither does any joy
seem to have been awakened by His assurance that
He was going to the Father. Nay, though He told
them that they themselves would be benefited by
His departure, their selfish love could not look onward,
nor did it spring from or result in the real confidence
of perfect love; and so they knew nothing, thought
of nothing, except the one fact that He was going
from them.
II. And yet we do ill to speak slightingly either of
them or their love. For their love : they did not
really know the love that was offered them or the
example of self-denial that lived amongst them. It
was new in the world. It was great to them. Too
great and too near, as it were, for them to be able to
measure it. But we have had the light of that In-
carnation of Perfect Love beaming on all the ages
since, and in every year's experience of life, of self-
knowledge and of history, we are enabled to learn
more and more of the true proportions of that great
love. ^
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144 THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION, [xiv.
And so with their Faith. Their faith as yet was
even more imperfect than their love. S. Peter, almost
as if unconsciously and by inspiration, had declared
the true Sonship of Jesus ; but directly afterwards
proved how little he knew of His mission : to S.
Philip, in the same discourse we are considering, Jesus
had said, " Have I been so long time with you, and
yet hast thou not known me, Philip ? " And the sim-
ple faith that ends in unquestioning obedience, the
child's faith, that found its expression in the Blessed
Virgin's "Whatsoever He saith unto you do it," had
probably been reached by few, if any, of the rest
Nevertheless it was their faith as well as their love
that Jesus was testing and training by the announce-
ment of His departure. For the Father can only be
known by faith : and it was knowledge of the Father
as well as love to Jesus that was wanted to make them
rejoice in the Ascension.
For both their love and their faith have their
exercise in that great statement, "My Father is greater
than I," rightly understood. Their faith and love, do
I say? Let me say, oufs also. For our faith and
love also have their exercise and their difficulty in this
very utterance, only the difficulty does not lie quite
in the same words. They stumbled at the words
" My Father \ " we at the words " is greater than I."
For their senses saw the Manhood of Christ, theh:
very hearts responded to His Human love; their
knowledge of Messianic prophecy aided their reason
hi saying that there was something Divine about Him,
that He was "a teacher come from God." They saw
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XIV.] THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION, 145
Him as man, they saw Him in His humiliation, they
saw Him as one of themselves. They knew that in
some way He claimed God as His Father, but the
difficulty was to beheve that He was in very truth the
Son of God^ not at all in believing that the God He
claimed as His Father was greater than He.
We on the other hand read of Him indeed on
earth ; but we read of Him and we love to think of
Him as the Miracle-worker, as the mighty Conqueror
of Satan, the very tamer of Death and suffering, the
High Priest in the Heavenly temple, the founder of
the Catholic Church, the head of the New Creation.
And in all this He appears still as the Son of Man,
whether when nailed upon the tree, or walking in
the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. Do we
remember how much we owe, how much, if I may say
it reverently. He owes, to His Ascension ? Do we,
while we think of His redeeming love and His mighty
power — do we accustom ourselves also to think of Him
as one with the Almighty Father? — do we think of the
very power of the Atonement coming from this, that
He was God who redeemed us? Do we therefore
think sufficiently of the diflference between His life on
earth and His hfe in glory, which is embodied in
"My Father is greater than I"? and which is so
grandly formulated for us in the Athanasian Creed,
" equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and
inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood"? — and
do we realize that the Ascension was the act by which
that Human nature assumed by Christ at the Incar-
nation at Nazareth was raised to the glory of the
L
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146 THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION. [xiV.
Father, stripped of everything earthly and humiliating,
the first-fruits of the Resurrection harvest ; the first
step towards the consummation of all things, when
all ransomed Human nature shall be gathered into
one, even into Christ, and Christ Himself surrender
His kingly crown to the Father that God may be
All in All ? Do we realize, I say, in homely language
what the Ascension has done for Christ and for us ?
Can we think that we do, when, speaking generally,
the day of remembrance of that event is so quietly,
so forgetfully passed by ? And if my fears on that
point are right, what is the reason ? Is it with us as
with the disciples, that we do not really love Christ —
we do not really believe in the doctrine of the Trinity ?
If we do love Christ, and love Him warmly, how often
is it only a selfish love ! We hail with joy the day
that brought Him into the world for us, though it
introduced Him to a life of shame and suffering ; we
dwell (thank God for it) with intensity on the thought
of His agony endured for us ; but whilst we think of
what He won for us, do we think of what it cost Him,
not that we may weep for Him, for that He forbade,
but that we may wonder at His love ? We burst forth
into Hallelujahs on Easter morning, and our Churches
are gay with the emblems of Spring, earth's teaching
of the Resurrection, and our hearts for a little while
are lifted up in communion with our risen Lord.
But He goes away. He leaves for ever the shame, the
temptation, the degradation of this life ; He leaves
the earth and enters the Highest Heaven ; He mounts
the Father's throne, and out of the Divine royalty
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XIV.] THE BLESSINGS OF THE ASCENSION, 147
He showers upon us the bounty of Heaven. He
leaves the earth, but by His Spirit promises never to
leave us ; He enters into His own glory, yet never
forsakes us ; yet we fail to follow Him with songs of
joy ; nay, we are worse than the disciples, for they did
sorrow at the thought of losing Him, but we seem to
treat the matter as one not worth a thought. On that
Ascension hangs the glory of Humanity; on it the
quickening of the Church into life ; on it the coming
of the Spirit ; on it the preparation of heavenly mansions
for us ; on it the power of working greater miracles than
even Jesus worked, a Pentecost shall testify ; on it the
joy and crown and glory of Jesus Himself
Surely on Thursday next we will follow Him in
thought as His footsteps press for the last time the
highway to the Mount of Olives. In the early morning
we will be with Him, in Holy Communion we will be
one with Him though ascended ; in the thought of the
glory of His Ascension even our religion shall lose its
selfishness, and our love shall grow like His; and
not in sorrow, not in indifference, but with joy in His
joy, we will follow Him with prayer and praise ; with
the eye of Faith we will still see His outstretched
hands, and with the inward ear we will hear the words
of benediction. Blessing and blessed His Humanity
departs from our sight, but from the depths of the
crystal sea that surrounds the sapphire throne, there,
where Christ is one with the Father, comes back in
solemn tranquil tones the echo of the Church's simple
consciousness of accepted and eternal love, " My
beloved is mine, and I am His."
L 2
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XV.
THE MODERN SPIRIT OF INQUIRY.
S. Luke ix. 9.
And Herod said^ yohn have I beheaded: but who is this of whom
I hear such things ? And he desired to see him.
The istrong desire to see Jesus here attributed to
Herod has a much deeper connexion with his pre-
vious speech about John the Baptist than might at
first sight appear.
It is my earnest desire by God's help to work out'
this connexion and lay it before you, in the hope that
it will illustrate many cases besides that of Herod ;
in the hope that many who have experienced the feel-
ing that produced the strange confession, "John I
have beheaded," will be led also to the further feeling
which will be gratified by nothing short of seeing
Jesus.
I. The feeling that wnmg from Herod that start-
ling admission, " John have I beheaded," was simply an
awakened conscience. Herod had cruelly murdered
John the Baptist Lust, brutality, revenge, the fear of
men, the madness of intoxication, the enthralment of
the soul to the power of impurity, — all these had their
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xv.J THE MODERN SPIRIT OF INQUIRY. 149
share in the murder. Herod, seduced by the sensuous
arts of a dancing-girl, surrendered, to that girl's in-
famous mother, the life of one whom he really
respected. And time passed on. It was only one
more wild deed in a reign and a time of violence :
attracting perhaps a little more attention than usual,
from the remarkable character of the sufferer, but
soon lapsmg into the indistinguishable distance of
the past.
There comes however, in course of time, to Herod's
ears news of One AVho is performing mighty deeds.
He is startled at the account. As the savage trembles
at the thunderstorm, thinking he is the special mark
of the fury of the great unseen forces, Herod
trembled at the greatness of the deeds with which the
land was ringing. He questions who it is. His
courtiers would allay his fears ; they tell him of Elias
who was for to come, or of the return of Jeremias
the seer of the Captivity, or of the arrival of one of that
prophetic band which had been for so long a time
without a representative among the people; but he
-will have none of these. He has heard a rumour that
it is John tl^e Baptist who was risen from the dead,
and that therefore mighty works did show forth them-
selves in him. And this rumour touches as it were a
secret spring in his heart. Then at any rate there is
a resurrection : " The voice of one crying in the
wilderness " is no longer silent : in the desolate wilder-
ness of Herod's heart that voice peals forth again ;
and Herod trembles, overthrown by the memory
of guilt, the consciousness of sin. Now dwell we
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I50 THE MODERN SPIRIT OF INQUIR K [xv.
for a moment on this sense of sin. What is it ? where
does it come from, how awakened, to what does it
tend ? Oh, these are questions, brethren, that strike out
wide into the realms of that unseen and infinite field
of being from whence the spirit of man was called to
be breathed into him. They probe downwards into
those depths of the soul which in their divine origin
are infinite.
But this much without touching on speculation we
may say : It is found in every man, and it is intended
by God to be cherished. It is found in every man.
There is a knowledge of right and wrong, moral right
and moral wrong, implanted even in the savage, and
in the child. It is utterly independent of education ;
for the child feels it most acutely, long before educa-
tion has had any effect on him : it is found among
the savages where law is unknown, and therefore is
not based upon the rules of human society. It may
be traced back and back, and from cause to cause,
till at last it leads us to the confines of another state
of being, and we own that the voice which philoso-
phers call the utterance of the moral sense sounds to
us across a gulf which separates the earthly, the
material, the fluctuating, the conventional, from some-
thing which is the exact reverse of all these ; which
exists, and therefore is a power of some sort ; which
must be left undefined and unappropriated by those
who know of nothing superior to man and his
intellect, but which by those who believe in God and
in revelation is recognized as a Divine heirloom, trans-
mitted to man from the earliest point of his existence,
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XV. ] THE MODERN SPIRIT OF INQ UIR K 151
a feature as it were of heavenly lineament not utterly
lost even in the most degraded.
And this conscience of sin, so universally im-
planted, is intended by God to be cherished. The
daily sacrifices of the Jews, and their greater and
more solemn offerings, all tended to this : the keep-
ing awake the sense of sin. They could not expiate
the sin; but they could testify to the worshippers
continually that expiation was needed. And so the
wound which the serpent had inflicted on humanity
was, as it were, kept open through the ages till the
true Physician should bring the real balm. And the
Christian gazes on the one sacrifice once offered,
and whether he has as yet been enabled to feel its
power or not, he knows that there is something to
which every Jewish rite and every sin-sick longing
in the hearts of men alike have ever pointed. Nor
is the weakness of man forsaken now in this matter :
but as the Jew in every victim slain upon the blood-
stained altar saw the witness to the stern decree,
"The soul that sinneth it shall die," so now, in
every Communion celebrated on the altars of the
Christian Church, he sees a testimony to the same
fact, and acknowledges "that blood for sin must
flow," nay, has flowed, as often as in the eating of
the bread and the drinking of the cup he shows forth
the Lord's death until He come again.
The Jewish Sacrifices then, and the Christian
Eucharist, alike testify to this : that God wishes the
sense of sin to be cherished; and the case of
Herod, neither a Jew nor a Christian, supported by
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152 THE MODERN SPIRIT OF INQUIR Y, [xv.
instances in the experience, I suppose, of every
missionary who has faithfully laboured, confirms the
belief that the existence of this sense of sin is
universal.
II. But to bring the fact of a sense of sin, recog-
nized by all and encouraged by God, from the
regions of general truth to the more practical and per-
sonal application of its working, let us look again
at Herod's case, when his awakened conscience made
him remember his special deed of sin in killing the
prophet of the Lord. His startled exclamation about
John the Baptist is followed by the inquiry, " Who
is this of Whom I hear such things ? '* and the com-
mentary is added that "he desired to see Him."
This desire, whatever it was in its source and its
nature, was not transient At length it was grati-
fied. When Jesus stood before Pilate, it was men-
tioned that he was a Galilean. "And as soon as
Pilate heard that He was of Herod's jurisdiction
he sent Him to Herod : and when Herod saw Him
he was exceeding glad, for he had desired to see
Him of a long season, because he had heard many
things of Him, and he hoped to have seen some mira-
cle done by Him. Then he questioned with Him in
many words ; but He answered him nothing." And
mark the end of this interview : " Herod with his
men of war set Him at nought, and arrayed Him
in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him again to Pilate."
Notwithstanding his alarm about the thought of
John the Baptist, and his desire to see Jesus, he
did not give up his sinful connexion with Hero-
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XV.] THE MODERN SPIRIT OF INQUIRY, 153
dias; and ultimately going to Rome with her, they
were both banished by the Emperor to the heart of
France, where they died in miserable exile.
Now look at the questioning as to Who our Lord
was ; look at the variety of answers given ; look at
the material, purely human curiosity which longed
to see a miracle and to hear something remarkable ;
look at the mockery and the gorgeous robe, and the
surrender of the Christ to the philosophic cowardice
of Pilate; look, above all, at the retention of the
sin which provoked John's sternest warnings and
Herodias' fiercest revenge.
Then let us notice the prevalence of a similar
spirit of inquiry about Christ at the present day.
One of our greatest living Divines says, "Never,
probably, was the life of Christ more earnestly
studied than it is at the present day, by those who
practically or avowedly reject Him. Never since He
ascended to His throne was He the object of a
more passionate adoration than now ; never did He
encounter the glare of a hatred more intense and
more defiant. If Christ could have been ignored."
this writer continues, " He would have been ignored
in Protestant Germany Yet scarcely any
German 'thinker* of note can be named who has
not projected what is called a Christology."
Is there not wrapped up in this a fulfilment of
Christ's own words, that His return to the earth by
the Spirit should convince the world of sin and of
righteousness and of judgment ? Wherever the sense
of sin exists as a definite intelligible feeling, there
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exists also an inquiry about Jesus — a desire to see
Him. It may be the blind man's teachable appeal,
" Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on Him ; " it
may be Ahab's defiant " Hast thou found me, O mine
enemy?" It may be Herod's brutal, stolid, first
frightened and then niquisitive desire to hear His
words and to test His power. But then co-extensive
with the sense of sin is the longing for knowledge,
the longing for light, the longing for some person — ^the
longing for certainty ; either that the burden may be
removed and the sores of the soul healed by living
sympathy, or else the whole theory of sin and of
righteousness and of judgment may be swept away as
a flimsy vision of the night. The knowledge of sin
gathers up all the storm of passionate earnest inquiry
round the Person of Jesus. Either He is a Saviour
or an impostor. Either He is the true Deliverer from
the greatest evil that weighs down humanity, or sin
and salvation are alike a delusion — " Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die." But here, my brethren,
especially towards the end of a discourse, when such
a subject could get scant justice, we need not dwell
on this side of the question. I need hardly ask you
who have ever really felt grieved and sorry for your
sins, whether you would be satisfied with any sight of
Christ but that one which the Bible gives us. I need
not ask you whether a Saviour who is merely as one
of the prophets would satisfy your needs ; whether
the hero of a beautiful romance, or the embodiment
of an idea of humanity, or a mystic personage some-
thing more than man and something less than God,
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XV. J THE MODERN Si'IRIT OF INQUIRY, 155
is the companion you desire in your hours of dark-
ness? You answer, with the energy of suppressed
feeling — No, it must be no idea; it must be nothing
unintelligible and vague; it must be a real person;
and it must be no mere man, however good and great
and true ; no simple example of unattainable obedi-
ence ; no being of a nature and powers on a level
with my own : it must be one who can feel with my
feelings, who knows every pang of body and soul,
who can measure even the bitterness and the weight
of sin, and the desolation of banishment from God ;
as such I must see Him, I must hear His voice, I
must have tiie touch of His sympathy. And yet He
must be more than all this; He must be also the
strong God, or else, however much I might love and
honour Him, I could never trust to Him for deliverance
from the overwhelming evils that surround me; He
must be man, to fold me to His human heart — He must
be God, to sustain me by His mighty power. And
this He is.
But, brethren, do you wish to find this — do you wish
that the voice of conscience which the power of God
by some mighty and mysterious working has aroused
within your soul, may safely sleep again, or whisper to
you, instead of threatenings, soft messages of peace
and joy ? Then, look not only wistfully after the great
Healer — but look firmly, resolutely, into your own
souls. Try not to hide either from yourselves or from
God. Many who have heard the voice of conscience
try to do one or the other. Either, like Adam and
Eve, they hide from God among the trees of the
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156 THE MODERN SPIRIT OF INQUIRY. [xv.
garden, feeling guilty they try to get further from God ;
or, like Saul, they present themselves before God,
urging that they have been obedient; or, like Herod,
they cling to their sin even in the midst of their re-
morse. They cling to it, and their desire to see
Christ profits them nothing; they cling to it, and
Christ comes before them, bound and apparently
helpless. They question with Him in mere curiosity,
they fling around Him the gorgeous robe of the wor-
ship of unreal words, or undisguised hypocrisy — they
relegate Him to others to do with Him as they will ;
but they cling to their sin.
But what saith God : " I held my tongue, and thou
thoughtedst wickedly that I am even such an one as
thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set before thee
the things that thou hast done.'* How ? When ? If
conscience be in any sense the echo of the Almighty
Voice, it may be silent now in time, but it will be
heard in eternity ; it is the language of Eternity, it is
the utterance of the Spirit. What is the sting of the
undying worm — what is the burning of the unquench-
able fire ? Sorrow, changed into remorse — despair for
ever crying out. Too late, too late !
But now, brethren beloved, we have the voice of
God within us, we have a High Priest who pleads for
us above, we have a Saviour, we have time. " Cast-
ing away," as conscience bids us, " every weight, and
the sin that doth so easily beset us, let us run with
patience the race that is set before us, looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of our Faith."
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XVI.
EATING BREAD JN THE KINGDOM OF
GOD.
S. Luke xiv. 15.
And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these
things^ he said unto him^ Blessed is he that shall eat bread in
the kingdom of God.
Very true ! Perhaps we are inclined to add, if we
make any comment at all on these words, "Very
true, very blessed indeed are they that shall eat
bread in the kingdom of God.'' And we feel very
comfortable upon reading it, and very well satisfied
as we add our own mental assent. And then perhaps
we read on, without paying any particular attention to
the connexion in which the words stand — ^without
observing what our blessed Lord had said to draw out
this remark, or what He proceeded to say in reply to it.
Yet both these examinations are necessary, if we
would ascertain, not only the meaning of the words
said, which is one thing, but the meaning of the man
in saying them, which is another.
Our Lord had been invited to a feast by one of
the chief Pharisees, as to a trap. It was on the
Sabbath day, and they watched Him, to see what He
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158 EATING BREAD IN GOD'S KINGDOM, [xvi.
would do or say, that they might take hold of it
against Him. The opportunity, as they thought,
soon came. There was a man with the dropsy.
Before they sat down to dinner Jesus healed him,
though it was the Sabbath day. But before they
could bring their hypocritical charge of Sabbath
breaking against Him, He answered them, or made
them answer themselves out of their own consciences,
by an appeal as to what they would do in a case
where something far less than a fellow-creature's life-
long misery was concerned on the Sabbath day.
But the rebuke for their hypocrisy was not yet
consummated. He had read their thoughts, and
answered them by anticipation. He has all the more
power now in rebuking what He observes in their
outward conduct. He had healed the man with the
dropsy ; He now attacks that spiritual malady, pride^
under which He saw them suffering — that inflated
feeling, that dropsy of the soul.
He spake a parable to them, when He marked how
they chose out the chief rooms or places at table,
everybody afraid that his rank or station would not
be sufficiently obser\'ed, afraid he would not be high
enough, not treated with enough consideration — where,
we may wonder, did the Lord of all sit at that proud
Pharisee's banquet ? — and seeking with energy places
that after all might have to be surrendered. He
spake a parable, it is said, but one so plain that there
was no possibility of giving any meaning to it but the
right one. And having for their good thus wounded
the guests in their tenderest feelings — for pride, as you
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XVI.] EATING BREAD IN GOD'S KINGDOM. 159
know, my friends, is very tender of itself — He turns
to His host and speaks a word of remonstrance to
him ; He blames him, and in him the world at large,
for the selfishnesses of society. The principle of " do
nothing that won't bring you in some return ; help
another, if it is likely that he can help you ; be generous,
on the ground that one good turn deserves another ;
invite people to your house and your parties, if they
can invite you back again," — this, and all the mass of
selfish consideration that underlies it, Jesus rebukes
in His address to the Pharisees. "When thou
makest a feast, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren,
neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours ; lest they
also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee.
But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the
maimed, the lame, the blind : and thou shalt be
blessed ; for they cannot recompense thee ; but thou
shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just."
We will only observe on this verse in passing, that
the prohibition does not mean that we are to show no
kindness to our friends and equals, but that we are
not to do it for the sake of a return ; we are to look
not at the wording only of the passage, but at the
spirit of it Christ never taught us to overlook the
duties of friends and neighbours, but He taught us a
wider interpretation of the words ; and bade us, as we
value His blessing, recognize our brethren among the
needy and the outcast ; and lay no claim to kindness,
or generosity, or hospitality, — so long as we render our
good offices only to those who would make a return in
like fashion.
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i6d eating bread IN GOD'S KINGDOM, [xvi.
But to return to the Pharisee's dining-room. We
may quite believe that these exhortations were very
unpalatable cheer both to guests and host ; yet they
contained utterances and principles which no one who
valued a reputation in the religious world would like
to contradict. So one good man, very good in out-
ward seeming, tries to turn the conversation. He
feels, as one has said, that the atmosphere of the con-
versation had become overcharged, and he is anxious
to draw off what might become dangerous to self-
love. So he breaks forth in an utterance very true, as
we have already said, but evidently framed with the
idea of picking up whatever was pleasant in the say-
ings of Jesus, and weaving it into a pious sentence
that might be generally edifying and shock no one.
For everyone would admire the sentiment; every-
one would feel their self-love tacitly complimented in
the implied idea that they severally would be among
those who would so " eat bread," everyone would
think how cleverly the speaker had received the
words of Jesus, and, like an adroit fencer, parried their
force ; no one would care to notice that it was the
resurrection of \htjust that Jesus spoke of, or to ask
themselves whether they intended to earn that blessed-
ness by obeying His commands. But the Lord
replied, by a longer, more searching, more terrible
address than any which the man had tried to escape
from in his rehgious generalities. It is the parable of
the Marriage Feast— the supper ready, the guests
invited, the manifold excuse, the tailing in of the
lame, the halt, the blind, from the streets and lanes of
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XVI.] EATING BREAD IN GOD'S KINGDOM. i6i
the city, the awful conclusion, " For I say unto you
that none of those men that were bidden shall taste
of my supper." How think you the feast went on
then? What were the feelings of those who kfiew
that the parable was spoken about them ? Who knew
that they were among the bidden guests, and yet had
made all then: life long one ever varying excuse for
rejecting the call of the great King — who were driven
to remember that it might be very easy and very pretty
to talk general platitudes about future blefssedness,
but that the practical, the important, the only real
question was, what were they doii^ now ?
I am not going, brethren, into any examination of
the parable. I limit myself; I would concentrate
your attention on the text and its circumstances.
Remember, wherever religion is heard of, there are
those who are ready to dwell upon its future blessed-
ness, and to assume that that blessedness is for them.
Never perhaps was the habit of religious talk more
prevalent than now. Go where one will, in places of
public resort, in private assemblies, as we travel from
place to place, as we catch fragments of conversation
from those we pass in the streets, religion is the
frequent subject, religious platitude the favourite
form. Christ's words are heard, read, repeated, com-
mented on, but the distinctive features are taken out.
The Cross is popular, but it is ornamented that it may
deck our persons ; no sharp comers or edges are
left, lest they should hurt or irritate. And is there
to be no voice heard on Christ's side, no one to take
His words and plainly lay them before the world ?
M
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i62 EATING BREAD IN GOD'S KINGDOM, [xvi.
Are we to rest contented with the self-satisfied as-
surance that we shall be guests at the marriage supper
of the Lamb, without the serious, daily, recollection
and acceptance of the invitation that is given now ?
Oh brethren, it is not the invitation that will save us, it
is not Christ's death that will save us, it is our accept-
ance of the invitation, our realization of His Death.
And now when we are at the point of drawing nigh
to celebrate the Holy Feast, can we not specially
apply some of those thoughts ?
See the banquet spread again, but not in the
Pharisee's house — it is in the House of God. See
Christ by Faith again present, but not as the Guest,
as the Host. Himself the Feast and the Master of
it, Himself the Priest and the Sacrifice. See Him, I
say, by Faith, and mark Him examining everyone's
heart Each communicant's outward deportment,
each communicant's inward motive is bare before
Him, every feeling of pride, every breath of selfish-
ness. Those who come looking down on their neigh-
bours, either in spiritual or temporal concerns, are
rebuked; those who do not humble themselves in
the presence of their Lord, who come to the burning
bush, as it were, of Christ's presence and do not put
off the shoes of earthly habits and desires, who come
as to a common meal, rather priding themselves upon
coming ; who come without repentance, and therefore
with their sins thick upon them, or without self-ex-
amination, and who therefore do not know what and
how great their sins are — oh, to such the loving Lord
speaks loving words of rebuke. Or again, those who
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XVI.] EATING BREAD IN GOD'S KINGDOM, 163
come with a regard for themselves upon them, whose
lives are governed by self-interest, who will only do a
kind deed, or lay out money, or enter upon a business,
or make a friend, with the view of what return they will
gain in this life, they, too, may sit at the same board
with Jesus as truly as did the men in the Pharisee's
house, but they, too, will gain nothing from the
Searcher of hearts except a rebuke for religious pre-
tence which has no root in the inner life. It is sad
to think of such. Invited, present, yet neither ac-
cepting nor accepted. God help them if there be
such among our Christian congregations. But we,
brethren, may in real not affected humility, in deepest
thankfulness feel that we are among the lame, and the
blind, and the halt, and the maimed, whom the dear
Lord came down to heal ; the dwellers and the
wanderers in the streets and lanes of this world whom
He came to seek and to save ; the stray sheep, who
can cause joy, even amid the joy of heaven, by
turning to the Good Shepherd, Who comes to find us ;
the guests who come clad in no rich garments of our
own, but with the marriage robe of the righteousness
of Christ, units in that great multitude whom no man
may niunber, which yet cannot outnumber the
mercies of Christ, faint yet pursuing in our weakness
the guidance of Christ's messenger to that banquet
hall of heavenly love, where, dear friends, one and all,
for those who have accepted the invitation there is a
place prepared ; where for those who at present are
without, who still are staying away, still obstinate,
still ignorant, or still undecided, " yet there is room."
M 2
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XVI r.
TONGUE OR HEART?
S. Matt. vii. 21.
Not every one that saith unto me^ Lordj Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven^ but he that doeth the will of my Father which
is in heaven.
Reality in religion may be taken almost as the key-
note of the Sermon on the Mount. A ruthless break-
ing through of popular ideas, and even of respectable
fallacies ; a relentless penetration beneath the action
itself to the motives from which it sprang ; removal
of every conventional standard of religion, till God
Himself and not man is made the interpreter of His
own laws, summed up at last in the all inclusive com-
mand, " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
which is in Heaven is perfect " — this is the complexion
of that most prominent of all our Lord's addresses,
which is sometimes appealed to as overriding dogma,
and suggesting the most valuable because the most
practical religion that the world has ever known.
And not only this positive side, but the negative
is also set before us. This clear enunciation of the
highest rule of life is coupled not so much with con-
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xvn.] TONGUE OR HEART? 165
demnation of those who openly reject it, as with
searching warnings to those who would substitute a
counterfeit Religious duties with the most binding
obligation are spoken of : but we are told also of those
who perform these duties only to their condemnation.
When ye fast, when ye pray, when thou doest thine
alms, be not as the hypocrites.
The tone of the whole Sermon places the famiUar
words of my text in closest connexion with prayer ; the
place they occupy in the Communion Office shows how
the Church associates them with Almsgiving. Fasting
may require a little more special explanation to show
the connexion, not from any real inapplicability, but
because Fasting has so strangely dropped out from our
so-called religious life, that comparatively few people
practise it at all, and there is the less apparent scope
for the warning not to do it to be seen of men.
Especially this morning let us dwell upon one sub-
ject as connected with Prayer and all oiu: worship.
And let us begin by taking the dark side. Unreality in
worship. And first as to Public Worship. It is not
hard to see how the temptation to unreality there
enters in, too often successfully. There are the crowd
of worshippers. It is well ; but are they worshippers ?
they are a congregration, but of what ? Worshippers
of course. Hear them, watch them; the frequent
response ; the rolling Amen ; the burst of song ; the
fervent Litany ; do not all these show the worshipper ?
Oh brethren, if we have these outward indications, still
beware ; look below the surface ; what do they spring
from? Whither do they tend? Hear our Lord in
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i66 TONGUE OR HEART? [xvii.
warning love " Not every one that saith unto me
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
Heaven." But look again. How many there are
of whom we cannot say that much ! In every con-
gregation, especially in so mixed and varying a one
as ours, there is siwe to be, thank God, a leaven of
earnestness, attention, and intelligent heart worship ;
there is also, alas, sure to be a mass of inattention,
formalism, hypocrisy and unreality. And as is often
the case, our best things are our greatest dangers.
Even earthly belligerents profess not to wage war with
peaceful citizens, though they may conquer and oppress
them : and Satan is quite content to keep those who
are his already in their deadly lukewarmness without
rousing them to consciousness by sharper temptations ;
but those who profess more as individuals or as con-
gregations are in proportion more fiercely assaulted,
their downfall more important to his Satanic kingdom.
Therefore whilst at any time this warning is salutary,
it is especially so for us now. We are spending our
substance to a certain extent in adorning the Sanctuary
of God : we are anxious that all connected with His
House and worship should be as carefully attended to
and provided for as possible. Let us see that it ts
in honour to Him, not that we may congratulate our-
selves on doing what we consider a good work, or in
possessing ourselves of a building or of appliances
which are arranged to satisfy our taste, minister to our
comfort, or even flatter our pride. All to the glory of
God. Then all is holy and blest — not great works even
with the "Lord, Lord'' upon our lips, and the heart
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XVII.] TONGUE OR HEART? 167
far from Christ. Simple words, old-fashioned words,
irksome words, but words to be dwelt on, even as
our Lord Himself enforcing by His own act of
amazing condescension the well known lessons of
humility said to His disciples " If ye know these
things, happy are ye if ye do them." So with our
subject matter. Ye know what makes the " Lord,
Lord " of public worship acceptable or hateful to the
King of kings. How is it rendered ? Let the Church
be as gorgeous as all human art dealing with the most
costly of earthly materials can make it ; it is still too
poor for and unworthy of the Lord of all things. Let
music lend all her ravishment to entrance the soul and
give expression to the deepest feelings, let every out-
ward indication be given, let the congregation rise up
as one man when the clergy enter to welcome them
as coming in God's name, and lowly fall on their knees
to pray for a blessing on them and on themselves, let
every knee be bent in prayer, every head lowly bowed
at the all hallowed name of Jesus, or the Trinity, let
the full burst of sound from organ and white robed
choir, and the thronging people, ascend up with the
voice of praise and thanksgiving from such as keep
holy day, let all this be and pray God it may be ; only
see to it that it is not because it is a fashionable habit,
or represents a party, or is agreeable to the individual
taste, or looks well, or is a defiance of others, see that
it be the result of real heartfelt interest, not the sub-
stitute for it. By doing these you raise as it were the
standard to defy the Evil One ; have you grace in your
hearts to withstand his assaults ?
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i68 TONGUE OR HEART? [xvii.
I admit that all these things are obvious, especially
as regards public worship, none the less needful how-
ever, to be remembered, and none the less applicable
to our private devotions. Then, too, who does not
know it ? is the temptation to say oiu: prayers without
praying, to utter the " Lord, Lord," and not to have
anything really to say to Him. There is something
tlmost akin to superstition, for instance, in the
regularity with which some men who never omit their
prayers at night scarce ever say them in the morning.
Is that real prayer, or mere custom, or cowardly fear ?
Can we give God a few sleepy minutes at our bedside
at night when the world has had all our day, and
grudge Him the few bright minutes of our waking
thoughts, before we dedicate our energies to the un-
ceasing round of pleasure or of toil ? Depend upon
it he liveth best who prayeth best, and we pray in
public very much as we pray in private.
I will not linger over another application of the
words, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord,
Lord." I mean the use of religious terms : the
readiness to enter into religious conversation and to
utter words of the deepest meaning without a thought,
without an earnest, wistful, heart-searching look into
our object in uttering them, and their effect on our-
selves or others.
But we will rather pass on. If those who worship
outwardly, who use holy words, and claim the know-
ledge of the Most High, will not all, of necessity, enter
into the kingdom of Heaven hereafter, who will ?
Christ tells us, " He that doeth the will of my
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XVII. ] TONGUE OR HEART? 169
Father which is in Heaven. There is all the diflferenc^
between saying and doing. " Why call ye me Lord,
Lord, and do not the things that I say ? " That holy
will of God which Christ came to earth to perfonn,
that will of God which towards us is not only redemp-
tion but sanctification — ^what is our attitude towards
it ? Do we try first of all to know what it is ? Do we
wish to do it ? When we do things such as pray, or go
to Church, or help a fiiend, or relieve distress, do we do
it because it is right, because it is God's will, or do we
do it in some way because we like to do it ? Take our
Blessed Lord's example in this as in every other matter.
We cannot attain to it I know, but He Himself sets high
standards before us that we may constantly aim high.
He came to do God's will. He said " My meat is to
do the will of Him that sent me,'' and when all Satan's
wrath, and all His own human weakness would have
turned Him from His great sacrifice for us, still His
prayer of love for us and devotion to His Heavenly
Father was that He might do His will And here as
we are specially on the subject of worship let me
mention one way in which Christ's will, and so the
Father's will, might be done very differently firom what
it is at present Of all the parts of our public worship
there is one and one only which was distinctly, formally
and universally laid upon us. Matins, Evensong,
Litanies, Collects, Hymns, are some of them com-
posed, all of them arranged by human authority,
even when that human authority is guided by the
Spirit of God. But the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper, the " Do this in remembrance of me " is
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I70 TONGUE OR HEART? [xvii.
the one plain, unmistakable order given by our
Lord Himself, the one expression of His Will as to
the method and form of our public worship. While
we stop away, while we content ourselves with prayers
and canticles, while we listen to sermons or read
religious books, or pay for a quiet, because deceived,
conscience through the week by one service sat out on
a Sunday ; or while we stay away because we do not
feet moved to come, or because we know we have sins
on our conscience which must be removed before we
can come, or because we cannot, dare not brace our-
selves up to the religion of the Cross, are we not in
all these ways saying " Lord, Lord " with our lips and
in our actions and hearts disregarding God's will ?
Oh, brethren beloved, there is need to press these
things : there is danger of unreality not only in our lives
but in our worship, and therefore in our lives too. It
was to His own disciples first of all, while the multitude
stood by, that Christ said, " Beware of the leaven of
the Pharisees which is hypocrisy." At the last day He
tells us that it is not only to the notorious sinner, but
to those who have preached in His name, in His name
cast out devils, in His name done many wonderful
works that He will say, " I never knew you, depart from
liie all ye workers of iniquity." I ask not what great
works you, my brethren, have done. I ask not what
devils you have cast out by glowing words from others,
what miracles of help you have wrought by using a Name
whose saving power you had never admitted into your
own souls. But I do ask you, as you would save
yourselves firom life-long self-deception, as you would
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XVII.] TONGUE OR HEARTS lyi
escape the fruitless utterance at the last great day of
the " Lord, Lord " which has been faithlessly uttered
here, to look into your hearts and give yourselves in
the sight of God an honest account of your Church-
goings, your almsgivings, your fastings, your Com-
munions, or of the absence of these blessed habits,,
and see how far you can reconcile your motive in the
one case or your practice in the other, with the re-
vealed Will of God, and trust God Who says through
His dear Son that they who wish to do that Will, shall
know of the doctrine ; and the knowledge which Jesus
imparts, knowledge of Himself, knowledge of yourself,
is knowledge which shall make you wise unto life eter-
nal. Oh for the possession of that perfect submission
to the Will of God, which may make us indeed of but
little estimation here, but which shall include us in
the number of those of whom it is written "They
shall be mine, saith the Lord, in the day when
I make up my jewels."
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XVIIT.
ROOTED IN FAITH.
S. John xiv. i.
Ye believe in God^ believe also in me.
To speak of Faith is, indeed, to go back to first
principles. For objectively, that is, looking out of
ourselves, the matters Faith has to deal with are the
first of all ; such as the existence from all eternity of
God, and then the Creation, the first revealed to us of
all His works, and all His works from then till now ;
and subjectively, that is, looking into ourselves, Faith
is not only the one requirement that God makes of
us towards Himself, but in the nature of things it is
the only faculty whereby we can have any intercourse
with the unseen world; nay, it is necessary for our
primary acceptance of the dogma that there is a God.
And yet, first principle as it is, common as the word
is, I feel that explanation rather than apology is
needed for my introducing this subject in the abstract
even to a congregation so far advanced as this. For
who knows experimentally what Faith is? who has
tried to analyse it philosophically? who has tested
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XVIII.] ROOTED IN FAITH, 173
the quantity and quality of it in themselves? Our
blessed Lord once sorrowfully asked the question,
" When the Son of Man cometb, shall He find faith
on the earth ? *' and> even a superficial observer would
have little hesitation in saying that let the prevalent
course of thought run on in its present groove, and
there will be no long time before the gauge of Faith
would indicate that if abounding unbelief be the sign
of the times that are to witness the Second Advent of
our Lord then all is indeed being rapidly made ready
for His coming.
And in saying this do not understand that I am
aiming at those who avowedly cast off* the creed of
Christianity. Such people are not in the habit of
presenting themselves in the House of God ; and it is
to those who are here, not to those who are absent,
that, God helping me, I would preach. Judgment
must first begin, we are told, at the House of God ;
and if judgment begin there, we may reasonably
suppose it is because iniquity is found there. There-
fore, dear brethren, to you, nay, to myself, would I
put the question, can Christ*s words in the earlier
part of the text be applied to us ? Can one truly say
to us " Ye believe in God " ? can we feel that we have
so strong a faith in the God of nature that that can be
made a ground of appeal to us to believe also in the
God of grace ? Seriously, brethren, do we know what
Faith is ? Everybody almost is familiar with S. Paul's
grand exposition of the nature and the effects of Faith
in the eleventh of Hebrews. Long ago we learned
that verse, " Faith is the substance of things hoped for,
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174 ROOTED IN FAITH, [xviii.
the evidence of things not seen ; " but even now as
we say it what impression does it leave on our minds ?
Let us examine that passage. S. Paul is speaking
of that Faith implied in the earlier part of our text,
" Ye believe in God." He had been urging on the
Hebrews the great danger of that want of Faith in
God ; that reliance on self which God Himself de-
nounced in the phrase, " If any man draw back, my
soul shall have no pleasure in him.'* He is going on
to comfort the souls of the Christians in their terrible
trials by reminding them what triumphs Faith had
won in the persons of the patriarchs and saints of
the elder dispensation. He inserts a short paren-
thesis as a definition of Faith. He passes on to the
Creation as the great illustration of the nature of
Faith, and the first great object for it to rest on.
"By Faith we understand that the worlds were framed
by the word of God, so that things which are seen
were not made of things that do appear." He gives
this first as an illustration of the action and working
of Faith. Things appeared not, things were not seen ;
as we should promptly say, because they did not
exist. Though we must recollect that everything
existed potentially from all eternity in the >^dll of
God ; and everything that has been created, or that
shall have been created or made till the end of time,
existed from all eternity in the mind and counsels of
God. However, they did not appear. But God
spake; the Eternal Father expressed His will. All
that before was void became material, all that before
was without shape became possessed of size, and
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XVIII.] ROOTED IN FAITH, 175
form, and order. The things which are seen were
then made of things which do not, which did not,
appear. There was, as we should say, nothing; there
was acting on that nothing no visible power, no hand,
but a Will and a Voice. That invisible power, out of
that invisible nothingness made all the things which
the generations of men have seen, as well as all that
has still been invisible to them all. Here is, I say,
an illustration of the working and nature of Faith.
For in another world, in the world of spiritual things,
in the world the eye of your immortal soul gazes on,
there is nothing ; there is a dark void. Then Faith
exerts itself, the darkness is dark no longer; light is
shed abroad in the heart, and on all the inner world ;
light is followed by order, form, beauty, life. Faith
is a creating power. As the Will and Word of God
out of nothing and perpetual night made the worlds
to uprise, which had nevertheless existed eternally in
the knowledge and power of God; so Faith in a
sense creates, at any rate makes to appear for us
those verities of the eternal which have ever existed
within us and around us ; it makes for us the realities
of the world to come out of things which hitherto
have not appeared to us, and to them who have no
faith do not appear.
And then the Creation is not only a grand picture
and explanation of the way Faith works, but it is also
the first topic on which Faith can exercise itself.
Here is the world around us ; nay, here am I myself.
Whence came it? whence came I? What is to be
the end of all? Brethren* with the Bible in our
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176 ROOTED IN FAITH, [xviii.
hands, and consciences not trained to ignore the
evidence of common origin which we find in them
and in it, we do not hesitate to say that Faith alone
can give the clear and ringing answer to the great
questions of existence. Our conscience goes, nay,
I should say our consciousness, and asks one great
power after another to give the answer; they all
demur. History, the earliest and the simplest of
teachers, the mouth-piece of memory through the
generations of the world, traces back for a time ; but
she is as one unskilled, who reads aloud a book in a
language she understands not. She repeats certain
facts, partial results, and questionable expositions, but
she is as powerless even to chronicle these things
from their source as we are to write the history of
all our infancy. Science — ^we ask, and she holds us
in suspense with head, as it were, half averted, and
intelligence looking witchingly out from beneath a
cowl of ignorance ; she gives us guesses at the truth
and leads us ever onward, arguing that she must be
right evermore because she walks in the road which
she assumed to be right at the first. But even she
only tells us of facts and deductions; she knows
nothing of motives, she guesses at the origin of life
and rebels against the idea of an eternally existing Will.
We ask of Faith, and she answers without hesitation,
" By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,
and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth."
" He spake and it was done. He commanded and it
stood fast." We ask her again, "Yes, but what
inspired all this with the order, the warmth, the sense
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XVIII.] ROOTED IJ^ FAITH, 177
of purpose, and fitness, which come from that great
gift of life to which all visible things in one way
or other minister? whence came, in short, that gift
of life?" She answers again, "Man was made
of the dust of the earth, but God breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living
soul."
And every day as we look on waving forest or
stormy sea, each night that we see the countless orbs
of heaven looking down like sleepless eyes upon
the earth, each hour we hear the unseen wind, or
measure our movements by the changeless flight of
time, we have a sacrament around us of the creative
power of God. The rule we began with reacts ypon
our souls \ the appearing of the creature world out of
the void of darkness showed us a figure of how faith
acts ; the appearance round us of the things we see
tells us of all beyond ; speaks by its mere existence
of its First Great Cause, and aids our faith in recognis-
ing the Divine Creator and Preserver of the whole.
But granted all this — and few of those here present
will deny it, theoretically at any rate — ^we must not stop
here, "Ye believe in God," said our blessed Lord,
*' believe also in me." We have not to deal with cold
abstraction ; the lovable, and therefore the personal is
continually brought before us by a merciful God.
Paul in the chapter already referred to gives the
definition of faith we have been expounding ; but
he does not leave his readers with that alone. He
shows them in that grand series of heroic deeds what
faith hath done ; he embodies the abstract power of
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1 78 ROOTED IN FAITH. [xviii.
faith in the holy lives, the patient suflferings, the
victorious deaths of the Fathers of that earlier
Church. Our gaze is directed higher still. I do not
say we are to study how faith was perfect in the Son
of Man, as every other virtue was perfected in Him,
that is a subject too deep to be treated by the way,
but I say we have an object there presented to our
minds on which faith feeds. The new creation gives
us the great absorbing topic of our faith. In the
creation of which we read this morning, the Father
wills ; the Word spake ; the Holy Spirit brooded over
the face of the unformed deep. In the new creation, of
which Jesus Christ is the Head, the Father willed and
sent Him; the Holy Ghost descended in ineffable
mystery on the Holy Virgin, and the Incarnate Word
was bom a man. This is the great object of the
Christian faith, and thus too the creative power of
faith is evident. Creative, so far as it makes evident
to us that which sense, cannot verify, nor reason ex-
plain : a dark, avoid, as regards spiritual matters, is the
mind of him who has no faith. That power exerts
itself, and there is a world called into being.
And say not in either case it is the mind that is
instructed, or, as we curiously say, informed, by grasp-
ing the records of these great events. It is quite
possible to have a thorough intellectual acquaintance
with all these means of information, and still to be
utterly destitute of faith. Faith is a Divine gift ; it
has a Divine origin, and supernatural powers. It is
perfectly distinct from knowledge; though there is
one use of the verb to know which illustrates it. We
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XVIII.] ROOTED IN FAITH, 179
are all aware of the difference between knowing of a
person, and knowing him. We know of him, perhaps
a great deal; yet he may be a person far removed
from us* by rank or distance, nay, he may be some
one who has been long since dead. But to know a
person is a very different thing, and so with faith : by
intellectual effort we may know of God, by faith
alone can we know Him. And it is this knowing God
which faith renders possible that is our eternal happi-
ness; and at the same time it is this faith which I
sadly said at first I feared was so much lacking among
ourselves.
Let me ask where are the proofs of it, either to
ourselves or to others ? How do we act upon it in
our worsh^) ? Take this house, do we believe that the
unseen God is here ? Surely if we did we should never
have to hear of the talking and the whispering before
the service begins, or the irreverent behaviour after-'
wards. If we really believe that Jesus Christ is
present in His Sacrament, we who profess to love Him
should not come so rarely as some of us do, or take
so littie trouble in preparing to come, or act while the
Sacrament is being administered as if there was no-
thing more going on than usual. Nor should we rise
from our knees and go out of church while the clergy
are receiving what remains of the Bread and Wine,
which, let me remind you, is just the same then as
it was a few minutes before, when you kneeled down
to receive it ; what was then the Body and Blood
of Christ is just as much so after the service is
over. Oh, what scope for faith there is in both the
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i8o ROOTED IN FAITH. [xviii.
Sacraments, though many boasting their faith discard
everything which reason does not approve.
But some will say, these are details only. Well
then as to principles, as to life. Where is our faith in
the Son of God ? As regards Him do we show it by
believing what He says, and doing what He com-
mands? I ask in most sorrowful confidence that in
many cases my challenge dare not be accepted. How
many of us are there in whose life it would make any
practical difference if to-morrow we were to deny the
faith we profess to hold ? Faith in Christ draws us
to Him, makes us like Him. Let us judge ourselves
by the standard of our life's resemblance to His how
much we really believe in Him. And then as regards
ourselves, how do we prove our faith to ourselves?
We read of the faith that could remove mountains and
that worked miracles. We say contentedly enough
that is all bygone. How do we know ? We should
have no right in any case, even if we had lived in the
apostolic age, to presume that God would work a
physical miracle -by us at any time ; but then and now,
we are bound, if we say we have faith, to test it by
doing things which without faith we should know to
be impossible. Victories won over ourselves, tempta-
tions resisted, habits brok«i through, wills subdued,
prayer persevered in through discouragement and
answered beyond expectation, high aims humbly
sought and attained, a standard of holiness daily
practised unintelligible to the world, and unpalatable
to the worldly, all these are some of the "greater
forks'' of failh which Christ told us we should
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XVIII.] ROOTED IN FAITH, i8i
do after He sent the Holy Spirit from the Father
to us.
How far are these aims ours? How far has our
faith advanced beyond that general faith in God and
providence which is not inconsistent in a Deist ? or
how far has our faith in Christ and His atoning work
advanced beyond that miserable shibboleth, whereby
that holy Name, and that stupendous sacrifice, lightly
traversing the tongues of men, is made a very excuse
for a life of indifference, and neglect of the things
that He ordered ?
Believe me faith is a creative power, and as Such it
is supernatural. It not only reveals mysteries to us,
but it enables us to live a life above the world ; that
life which Christ lived here, which we must live if we
would live with Him hereafter. Oh that the power of
God would open our eyes that with the gaze of faith
we might see the end and author of it, even Jesus
Himself; that we might see also how terribly even
the best among us live the life not of Christ and of
faith, but of self and of sense, and that every feeble
glimmer of that heaven-bom ray in us might be so
strengthened, that Christ might dwell in our hearts by
faith and so illumine each one of us by His presence
that His Church might be what He intended it — the
Light of the World ; the city set on a hill ; a people
passively conspicuous in the world by differing from
its habits and rising above its level.
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XIX.
JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE.
Romans viiL 24.
We are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope : for what
a man seeth, why doth he yet hope fori
Faith brought us into the region of the unseen, gave
us fellowship with the unknown, and in a sense created
for us that which to those who have no faith exists
not at all. Not that things not believed in do not
really and in themselves exist, any more than the
world and the sunlight do not exist because the
blind man does not see them. For that which is, is,
though all mankind conspire to deny it. But faith
with its creative power brings for each man an order,
a cosmos^ out of the dark void that surrounds His
understanding and peoples it with living forms.
But to-day we have something that must follow on
faith if it is to be really a comfort to us. Something
that enters into the world that faith has made to
appear before us, and fixes its gaze on those things
which are the essential elements of our happiness
and the means of our obtaining it, and presses them
into her service. This power is hope, of which
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xix.] JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE. 183
S. Paul uses the strong words in the text that "we
are saved through hope." That faith and hope work
together is true ; that faith brings near what hope is
craving is undeniable. Nevertheless hope is the
offspring of faith, and is to be distinguished from
it. Faith deals with all unseen things past, present,
and to come : with all sorts and descriptions of them,
good and bad, terrible and delightful — ^widi the
existence of God, and of the Devil, with creation
and the final judgment, with Heaven and Hell.
Hope deals solely with the future and the delightful.
(i.) With the future. This appears at once from
the language of the text, "hope that is seen is not
hope : for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope
for?"
I need not illustrate this from common life. I need
not stay to prove how hope is literally life in the
future, even here ; I need hardly linger on the power
that this hope has had in creating progress, in making
existence bearable, in winning the hard-fought battle
of life in many a field of love and war, of science
and of merchandise. Ever since Jacob toiled on
patiently through his seven years of hope, and sur-
vived his bitter disappointment to toil and hope seven
years more for the wife he loved, and yet seven years
again for the fortune he deserved, hope has ever
been the enchantress of the future that has led energy
up the steep and rugged present, never allowing the
dov^Tiward, backward look, lest difficulties, even after
they are passed, should distract or paralyse, but bids
it ever look upward, onward, forward to the prize.
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i84 JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE, [xix.
But let us bear in mind with a more definite
religious purpose this fact — that hope deals with the
future. It may seem a truism, or at least a platitude.
Nevertheless think what it means. It means this : that
although certain objects of faith exist from all eternity,
and are absolutely at this moment existing and operat-
ing in us and around us, although it is true that
certain gifts of God's free grace which we seize by
faith, as by the hand of the soul, are now within our
grasp, though even that great gift of eternal life
through the death of Jesus Christ is actually now by
a theological truth in the possession of the faithful, —
yet that after all there is much, very much, that the
least and greatest has not yet attained, and cannot
attain on this side of the grave.
By faith "we have eternal life;'' not "shall have,"
but "have." It is not only within our reach: we who
believe in Jesus Christ, and testify that belief by being
grafted into His body, have actually entered on that
eternal life, that inner life, that supernatural life, over
which the grave has no power except to free us from
the husk, as it were, and sheath, that now clothes it
round, and which is never for one moment interrupted
from the day of regeneration to the day of final per-
fection. Faith grasps all this. But faith knows full
well, that besides this supernatural life of good there
is a supernatural life of evil in each one of us, and
that while the grave cannot hurt one of Christ's
children, the very extension of life here may be only
the complete withering up of that life of good ; so
that though the life perish not, nor the body ia which
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XIX.] JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE, 185
that life moves and acts, yet we may be cut off from
that body of life, may be as the unfruitful branches
which Christ our Lord tells us shall be cut off and
perish, though they have been branches in Him the
True Vine. Faith sees both sides of this momentous
truth, and grasps tenaciously at the one if it be a
living, loving faith. But hope deals only with the
bright side. Hope looks not at the past, nor at the
present — hope looks onward ; being the child of faith,
with faith's eye she sees the unseen, and gives us
strength to endure and to labour. Hope rests in future
blessedness not yet realised ; faith gives certainty to
those unseen objects of hope ; but it does not give
certainty to us, so with hope added we look on and
wait For, as the Apostle continues, " if we hope for
that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.*'
There is therefore in the hopeful Christian a continual
reaching onward to that which is before, and at present
unseen, there is no such thing as that false assurance
which is in reality either presumption or indolence,
which says I have faith, and all is done, I am quite
assured that I can never fall away. I am saved, I
am safe. Nay, but we are saved by hope. We are
in a state of salvation by faith, but the completeness
of that salvation is matter of hope, and the very act
of saying all is done and there is nothing more to do
or hope for, is like the waking utterance of a dream,
when the slothful wayfarer, who knows that there is a
home and a welcome waiting for him, declares that
that knowledge is all he needs, lies down forthwith to
sleep, in his dream continues his illuspn, and crying
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i86 JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE. [xix,
out d! have it, I am fed, I am resting, I am home,
wakes up to find himself starving and desolate, and
the sun sinking over the distant moorland where his
unaccomplished journey lies.
(2.) But hope differs from faith not only in dealing
exclusively with the future, but also in dealing with
the bright things of the future. The bright things of
the future in the very midst of the gloomy things of
the present
Faith has become a real power in us. It has given
us such an insight into ourselves, and such a know-
ledge of God, and His words, and dealings, that we
are no longer at peace. Like wandering Israel, we
feel we have been backsliding and unfaithful. We
have received our lapful of blessings, and we have
never thought whence they came. We have had all
things richly to enjoy ; and we thought the power to
enjoy them was our own, and the things themselves
were the gifts of our lovers. We thought that the
world, that pleasure, that politics, that study, what
you like, any idol that we particularly made our own,
gave us all the pleasure that we had ; and we forgot
our allegiance to God, who is the soul's true Lord
and Love, and went in our adulterous search after
the love that betrayed us. Yet God's love, and His
patience, were still unchanged; and by the apparent
accident of some thought or circumstance, some
blessed memory, or some strange misgiving, or some
happy misfortune, He allured us into the wilderness,
and spoke comfortably to us. Then was our heart
broken indeed, then under the summer of His love
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XIX.] JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE. 187
did the frozen hardness of our hearts melt, and we
felt how we had led ourselves to the very confines of
despaur. And still in our misery His gentleness kept
us from despair. His message told us there were
difficulties, not improbabilities, around us ; the Valley
of Achor became a door of hope; the very place
and circumstance of our sins, greedily committed,
carefully concealed, humbly confessed, became the
very means whereby a thrilling sense of joy moved
with painful throbs through our bewildered soul, like
returning animation to the senseless form, and through
our troubles, out of our misery, into the future we
looked when God held open the door of repentance
and bade us enter in.
And again, even after conversion do all things seem
to be against us. Like a mighty current setting
towards us, all habits and thoughts of evil too long
indulged and now abhorred still crowd around us.
Companionship and example, temptation, surprise,
allurement hurl themselves against us ; if we resist for
one moment they are beside us ; then, dashing by in
their foaming strength, tliey seem to look back ivith a
scornful greeting to us and woo us to be with them
once again. And then helps that once we had are
ours no more ; the glow of our early days of conversion
has given way to the subdued light of ordinary feelings,
nay, has been succeeded by a certain feeling of languor.
Old friends who helped us by their counsel, perchance
he whose voice first touched the chords of our hearts
and made them vibrate, are now no more ; we are
Standing alone among a multitude ; or, worse still, we
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i88 JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE, [xix.
have been betrayed by those we trusted ; some one
whose example should have guided us has fallen, and
it has been as in the day of battle when a standard-
bearer fainteth. How is it we even still persevere,
how is it we have any fortitude left ? How stands the
ship with tottering mast when the narrow passage lies
between the harbour mouth and the fatal shore ; how
is it that, with the wind shrieking through the torn cord-
age, and the last remnant of her sails flapping, with
her head in the teeth of the gale, and her stem ac-
tually splashed by the roaring breakers, she still
holds her own, nay surely, though slowly makes head
against all her difficulties, escapes the threatening
bar and enters the waveless harbour ? Good hands,
brave hearts on board, and the anchor safely holding,
and the trusty cable gathering her inch by inch into
the harbour where she would be.
And we have an anchor of the soul both sure and
steadfast and which entereth into that within the vail.
From the storm-tossed vessel of the Church here
below, in through the vail, through the unseen into
the waveless harbour and the unyielding anchorage of
Heaven our hope ascends. All here is shifting, noisy,
uncertain, all behind is perilous, nay, fatal ; all there is
firm, unchanging — all there is peace for evermore.
Our forerunner has entered in. He gives the security ;
He guarantees the end. He draws us by the cords of
a man ; the morning wakens, the shadows pass away,
the mists lift up, 'tis Jesus standing on the shore.
Jesus, Who Himself hoped unto the end. Who for the
joy that was set before Him endured the Cross
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XIX.] JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE. 189
despising the shame, and is now set down at the right
hand of God. And that Cross, oh brethren, if we are
bearing that Cross now, it shall prove the Anchor to
which our hope is fixed. And as we see Him there, as
we gaze upon Him, our hope beams brighter and
stronger and truer; no longer having no hope, no
longer without God in the world, we are by anticipa-
tion in heaven already, and in reality are every day
preparing for it, and drawing nearer to it.
For we must not omit the practical consequence of
having hope. S. John states it for us : " and every one
that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as
He is pure." That must be so. To talk of hoping to
be with Christ for ever and ever, and to be going on
as we are from day to day — not weeding the garden
of our soul, not rooting out the noxious weeds, not
meditating on His words and acts— the idea is a con-
tradiction. It is an awful thought to be living here
with no hope and without God in the world ; but,
brethren, can you picture what it would be for such a
one to be for one moment with God revealed in His
glory, without hope ? To feel, on the one hand, the
agony of His awful presence ; justice alone revealed to
you ; mercy wearied out and turned away ; the time
for repentance past; to be for one moment only in
that presence, with no hope of softening, no hope of
change, and every fiend who ever tempted you to
commit those unrepented sins, hissing the recollec-
tion of them into your tortured heart; agony, with
hope precluded by the knowledge of that life of
persistent sin, of studied neglect of God, of self-
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190 JOYFUL THROUGH HOPE, [xix.
willed defiance of His mercy, of impotent rebellion
against His will and refusal of the atonement of
Christ; the Cross, the redemption, the message of
mercy, the warning of conscience, the means of
grace, the holy sanctuary where love once invited you,
the human life where the Holy Spirit once pleaded
with your better self— to see all those as things of the
irrevocable past, as you stand before the Judge, with
God, without hope, and still to know that when that
moment which words cannot describe is over an
eternity succeeds, an eternity of despair.
Then is the consummation; hope crowned with
everlasting possession, or hope gone, for ever ! But
now — it is the " now " we have to deal with — turn ye to
the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope ; a voice is call-
ing, a hand is sustaining, angels are watching, the
space between this little stormy race of life and the
smooth deep harbour of eternity is narrowing every
moment. Oh, for the hope that maketh not ashamed I
Oh, for the single eye that looks straight through the
storm to Jesus ! Oh, for the purity that day by day
strips off each thitig and thought that makes us
untrue to our profession, and weakens our hold upon
the anchor of our hope !
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XX.
STEADFAST IN CHARITY.
I S. John iv. iq, 1 1.
Herein is /ave, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved^ if God
so loved us, we ought also to hue one another,
S. Paul after writing in language which, not only by
the power of its inspiration, but by the beauty of its
style, may well make us pause before we try to add
anything in the way of explanation, says, "Now
abideth Faith, Hope, Charity, these three, but the
greatest of these is Charity."
It is about this greatest gift that I would, by the
help of Him from whom it eternally comes, meditate
with you this day.
Anxious souls, living in the world, and desiring to
be kept free from its defilement ; well meaning souls,
not without misgiving as to how far your baptismal
robe has been kept pure in the midst of temptation :
one and another feeling that the world is a dangerous
sea, through which nevertheless we must sail our frail
craft towards the eternal haven, look out already
for Lent as an island under whose lee they run their
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192 STEADFAST IN CHARITY, [xx.
little vessel for a while, and by the upsoaring cliffs of
its stem requirements may be sheltered at once from
the gusts of passion and extravagance, and be helped
onward with even keel towards the end of their
course.
Running there as it were under this lee, we gather
our thoughts together, and direct them upon the
greatest subject which we can call practical It is a
subject which at once includes all duties, and carry-
ing our thoughts upwards shows us that the source of
all duty is divine ; nay, that there is only one motive
for doing right, though persons sometimes vex them-
selves by naming two, for that rightly understood and
traced back to their source, duty and love are one.
** Herein is love," says S. John, <* not that we love
God, but that He loves us," or a little later, " we love
Him, because He first loved us." Now, brethren,
trace these words to their full meaning, and as you do
so take in your mind also the revealed word .that
" love is of God " and, one step higher yet, that " God
is love." Then bear in mind, in another direction,
that every good thing which we see around us or feel
in us here is a type or reflection of some real good
existing elsewhere, which faith tells us of, and
hope desires. Such words as father, family, marriage,
temple, love, nay, life itself, are not realities which exist
here below, but are used to express something which
rpay by a figure be said to resemble them in the
unseen world. The realities are in the unseen world,
the. figures and shadows are here. All the dear
names that thrill our hearts in affection's language, all
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XX.] STEADFAST IN CHARITY, 193
that comforts the wearied and hard-working in the
thought of home and family, all that makes the
patriot's heart glow with the idea of country and
heroism, all that aids the devout worshipper in the
things of religion or the thoughtful Christian in the
matters of his inner life, are representations of the
Divine original existing in the eternal councils of
God : allowed by Him to exist, or rather to appear on
earth, in order to draw us to the greater things of
which they tell ; and framed in the heart or before the
understanding of each man, by that Holy Spirit
which searcheth all things, even the deep things of
God, on the very principle that was given to Moses
when he made the Tabernacle ; " see that thou make
all things according to the pattern showed thee on
the mount"
And so with Love. We know that it is the sun-
shine of all our life here, we know it is the one thing
that really warms, and brightens, and cherishes, and
quickens, and satisfies. But do we know whence it
comes, and what it is ? We know that it is the very
bond of peace which links one and another together,
overleaping difficulties, outliving delays and disappoint-
ments, healing wounds, preventing and repairing
quarrels, increasing joys, the parent of every virtue,
the comfort under every ilL But do we, again I say,
think what it is and whence it comes? Sometimes
our thoughts rise upward as we hear the words above
quoted, " Love is of God ; " sometimes, and God be
praised for that, we remember that there is a love far,
far exceeding the greatest love which we can have for
o
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194 STEADFAST IN CHARHY, [xx.
one another — the love of Him, who said, " greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends;" and we push on, by the grace given to
us, to remember that He who thus spoke was God as
well as man ; and a few — comparatively, I fear, a few —
soar on the wings of Faith still nearer to the Sun of
truth, and gaze upon the revelation that that Divine
love was not only the love of the Son for us, but the
love of the Son for the Father in the very utmost
perfection of obedience to His will, and the love of
the Father for us in providing a propitiation, and the
love of the Father for the Son in sparing Him so
to suffer, that out of that mystery of suflfering there
might arise a mystery of glory, a mystery of triumph.
Brethren, even these are heights of snowy splendour
on which the sunlight of revealed truth seems ever to
shine far above the earth. But far away again, beyond
and above these, are thoughts of truth and wonder
about this mighty name of Love, which are indicated
to us by such words as those other, " God is Love."
We see love here as the holy bond between members ;
we think of the unity of God, and we pause and
wonder how "God is Love." Then, "in the be-
ginning," there begins to open a light upon us, and we
see in creation a proof of the love of God, a love which
would have an object, and found that object — in all the
beauty of the universe, and in man made after its own
similitude. But still we rest not — the Eternal Spirit
brooding over the vast abyss before the worlds were
formed was the Spirit of Love ; the Word which spake
was the Eternal Word, one with the Everlasting Father,
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XX. ] STEADFAS T IN CHARITY, 195
God from all eternity, — in the bosom of the Father is
eternal love, in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is
the explanation of love, in the relations of these three
most Holy Persons is the eternal work of love. The
Father ever loving the Son \ the Son ever receiving the
Father's love and reflecting it; the Holy Ghost, the
Eternal Spirit of love, nay, that Eternal Love which
is God, the sacred bond of the Eternal Trinity.
Brethren, when you look into your own hearts, and
ask yourselves in some moment of sincerity what there
is in them which you could really wish to be eternal,
what of you, and in you, you could really wish to be
conscious of for ever and ever, surely there can be but
one answer — that which you have of love, the love
which is in you which is God-like, nay, which is God
in you.
But now, brethren, let us see how this love works in
you. Love always desires the presence of the loved ;
and if there be obstacles, barriers, difficulties, that
interfere to separate the loving and the loved, then love,
if it have but little power at its command, will try to •
overleap, or to wade, or in some way to circumvent
these barriers. But Love, if it have great resources, will
take a bolder course, and will remove such barriers.
Now see what God has done. . God loved us ; God
loves us ; from the beginning He loved us. He made
us in order that He might love us ; and He loved us
beforehand, though He knew how in Adam we should
fall — how in ourselves we should lie in the very slough
of sin. But nevertheless this Sin is a barrier, a mighty
barrier. It had power to stop the course, not only of
o 2
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196 STEADFAST IN CHARITY, [xx.
man's blessedness in Eden — that must seem little when
compared with its latter achievements — it had power
to stay the wonder-working Hand of Jesus Christ in
those who had not faith to be healed. It not only
slew the bodies of men, but it could banish from the
eternal love of God those who chose to love it rather
than God. It not only arrayed the generations of
the human race in outward rebellion against their
Sovereign, but it fortified each individual heart of those
millions with a hard impenetrable obstinacy, which
made it inaccessible to the love of God. And the
love of God which had gone forth out of Itself to
delight Itself in the world It had made, seemed driven
back from earth to heaven, from them to God.
But there in heaven, in God, love triumphed again,
and found that which should remove even this great
barrier. Love in the councils of the Eternal sent
forth the Son to be the Saviour of the world. He,
sinless, would draw upon Himself the sin of all the
world \ He, out of His unspotted and inexhaustible
holiness, would offer righteousness which should. clothe
the whole world, and breathe forth once more that
Spirit which is Love to enter into the hearts of man-
kind, and make them desire that righteousness which
should make them once more fit for the presence of
God. And so Love was enabled to look forth once
more, to see, not a flood of waters covering the earth
and cleansing it by destroying the unclean, but a flood
of righteousness cleansing it, by imputing to it and
imparting to it the righteousness of Christ and the
sanctification of the Spirit
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XX.] STEADFAST I^r CHARITY, 197
Brethren, poets, as you know, have sung that there
is a music which they call the music of the spheres
— ^the harmony of all creation even blending through
sea and sky, through earth and heaven, the most fault-
less tones ; melody so ravishing that those who heard
it once could never rest, must draw ever nearer to it ;
tones so loud in their mighty vibrations that they fill
all space \ and yet which we, through our preoccu-
pation, or through our hard chill, indiflference, never
hear. And so it is with this great theme of the love
of God, who loved us, and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. We have heard it all our
lives ; we are unaffected by it ; its utterance flows over
the days and hours of our life like water over the well-
worn pebbles of the brook, and yet, to one who has
even heard but one faint note of that wondrous song,
it seems no historic incident of the past, but a fact
ever true to his consciousness that it is an angel's
voice, an angelic chonis, that tells of that peace and
goodwill to men and the glory of God in the
Highest, which God wrought out by His love for men
in the work of Jesus Christ.
God's love, our sins, Christ's propitiation. These
are the special subjects for your earnest meditation
during the coming Lent God's love underlies the
whole, and shows our sins that we may feel our
need, and therefore we take the sins first. Will
you not come — we do not weary you this Lent with
asking you to come often to this house — will you
not come next Wednesday morning and evening, to
acknowledge your own sinfulness, to fall on your
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198 STEADFAST IN CHARITY. [xx.
knees before the footstool of God's grace, and tell
Him all : tell Him that you did not know, and never
can know here, how much He loves you, but that you
do know, though not, alas ! as well as He knows, how
little you love Him. That is Ash Wednesday's work ;
and thankful indeed shall I be if any of you make
application to me, or to my fellow-workers, to labour
with you either in personally examining the needs,
the faults, the prospects of your individual souls, or
in studying the revelation of God's will towards us
in all the great work of redemption. We shall be
thankful to help you with all the power God will give
us, either in the individual work of the one kind, or
in the meeting for classes and instruction in the
other. Only make a beginning with a resolute act
of self-denial next Wednesday, and say fervently " it
is for His sake who loved me, and gave Himself for
me."
But to-day there is one part of the text that still
remains for consideration. ** Beloved," says the
Apostle, "if God so loved us, we ought also to
love one another." You know, I believe, how much
I dislike the practice of taking some solemn words
of Holy Scripture, some of the deepest thoughts of
theology, and bringing them to bear as it were on
some particular assailable point of your feelings, till
you are moved thereby to a special effort for some
special charity. It is not that I would disparage
the charity which asks, and I trust will not ask in
vain, your aid to-day; but I am desirous that the
great and plain principles which we try to bring
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XX. ] STEADFAST IN CHARITY. 199
before you should take root in your hearts as prin-
ciples, and bring forth naturally and abundantly the
fruit of a holy, a productive, a beneficent life. So
to-day — if the thought of the love of God touches
your heart — if the thought of God not sparing even
His dear Son, but giving Him freely for us in our
spiritual poverty, sickness, and degradation, moves any
generous impulse in your heart; if love wakes up
the return of love, and you feel that there are those
around you whom you can benefit by your love, and
whom you can love for His sake ; then, dear brethren,
I feel and know, nay, my experience in this church
shows it to me, that you will not on one occasion
only — not because your feelings are worked on for a
moment but because your life is one feeling of debt,
a debt of gratitude, a debt of love burning to ac-
knowledge all it owes, and to own its inability ever
to repay it, — ^you will, I say, on these grounds, not now
only, but now and ever, do " what you can " for love
of Him who loved us. And if you see around you
the poor, the sick, the halt, the maimed, and it is in
the power of your hand to help ; if you see them,
and see in them types of the spiritual evils to which
we all are subject; if you think then what He did
among those evils in the lazar-house, as it were,
of this world as it had become by sin, there will be
no need then for me to tell you what to do ; — love has
failed if it does not find at least the desire to give;-
and my prayer is this, that be the oflfering what it
may, love in your hearts may prompt the gift, and
Love on High accept it
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XXI.
THE SALT OF THE EARTH.
S. Mark ix. 49.
For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall
be salted with salt.
The little word " For " at the commencement of this
verse is the only part of the text that I purpose
taking as a guide to our meditations this morning;
and the reason is that the subject of the verse is so
vast, and its connection with many thoughts that
much concern us so subtle and so frequent, that we
ihall be fully occupied if we follow where that little
particle leads us into the previous teaching of the
chapter.
Without going back into the remoter distance where
Christ rebukes His disciples in several ways for their
want of humility, we look at the six preceding verses.
Christ had warned the twelve solemnly against the
danger of giving offence or temptation to sin to one
of the little ones that believed in Him, and then more
solemnly, more sternly. He warned them against
those things which should be an offence or cause of
sin in themselves. Let us listen to what He says :
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XXI.] TH£ SALT OF THE EARTH. 201
"If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for
thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands
to be cast into hell fire, where their worm dieth not,
and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend
thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into
life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the
fire that never shall be quenched, where," &c. " And
if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out : it is better for
thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye,
than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire, where,"
&c On these words let us dwell. And first let us
note where that thrice repeated and most impressive
refrain comes from. It carries us back to the Old
Testament, to the concluding words of the prophecy
of Isaiah, to th^ passage where he seems to set before
us the concluding scene of this world's drama. He
shows us in the vista of long ages yet to come the
last great work of God's ancient people, which, we
learn from various parts of Holy Scripture, is to
gather in the great har\'est of the nations, to supersede
all the dislocated missionary action in which we now
so painfully labour : herself, once more " beloved," to
become the joy of the whole earth, once more recon-
ciled to her God, to be *^ life, from the dead " to the
utmost ends of the earth. Arid so the picture is
traced out before us, " in outline dim and vast," of
the saints brought together to Jerusalem to be them-
selves an offering unto the Lord, an idea which we
shall see reappearing hereafter in our text ; while, far
beyond the horizon of even the seer's vision, the
promise of endless life, endless as the new heavens
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202 THE SALT OF THE EARTH. [xxi.
and the new earth, stretches on into eternity. But
side by side with this, the terrible shadow cast by the
glowing Hght is the vision of the lost Jerusalem on
her rocky thrpne presents the glories of the redeemed;
Hinnom, with its death-fires ever burning, never
quenched, the endless misery of those that have
transgressed. "And they shall go forth," saith the
Lord, " and look upon the carcases of the men that
have transgressed against me; for their worm shall
not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and
they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh."
And why does the gracious gentle Son of Man
revert to this hideous picture — ^why dwell with thrice
repeated emphasis on the quenchless fire and the
undying worm? Because He whose Hps are Truth
and whose heart is Love would warn His people
beforehand, and set before them beyond the possi-
bility of mistake the issues which have here in this
life to be decided for the life to come.
He knows there is pain, both mental and bodily,
to be endured in His service; He knows there art
loving hearts in whom His grace has so far worked
thai? they have ceased to ask " what must I do to be
saved?" but ask rather, "what may I do, what can
I do, to prove my love to Him who loves me?"
He knows also that there are the cold, the wayward,
the indolent, the self-interested, the undecided, the
trifling. To them he would speak, for their souls
also He loves who died for all ; and, far more than
even His blessed Apostle, He would by all means
save some. Nay, dear friends, let us cease from
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XXI.] THE SALT OF THE EARTH 203
drawing what may be a Pharisaical line in this
matter: let us acknowledge one and all that we
like far better to dwell on the promises of the Gospel
than on its threatenings, that we like what is called
the bright side of religion and forget that it has its
sterner aspect ; let us remember that sin is not only
something for Christ to forgive, but for us to repent
of, and that selfishness must be condemned and self
denied. This our Lord brings before His disciples.
They had been covetous among themselves for the
first place, nay, they had been jealous over their
position as His followers so far as to forbid one that
cast out devils in Christ's name, because he did not
follow Christ with them. Not only vulgar rivalry,
but the most subtle form of selfishness, religious
jealousy, so nearly akin to love for Christ, had led
them into its snare. All this Christ rebukes; He
takes the familiar imagery of parting with the most
necessary members of our body, rather than being
ourselves cut off as withered members from the Body
of the True Vine. He draws the contrast — on
the one side the one sharp pang, followed perhaps
by a life-long void, which shall end with death and
be replaced by life everlasting ; on the other side is
suggested the constant compromise, the restless dis-
satisfaction of a whole Hfe spent in buying off the
evil day of present sufifering at the expense of future
misery. The daily misgiving, the unsatisfactory
excuse, the self-condemnation, the stifling of con-
science, the uneasy enjoyment, the hollow pretence
of happiness, the artificial excitement, the unreal
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204 THE SALT OF THE EARTH [xxi.
interest, the constant eflfort to reconcile God and
mammon; and then, the prospect held out to us
by the thrice repeated warning of our Lord of the
eternity of woe, " Where their worm dieth not, and
the fire is not quenched."
But let us see a little more specifically what is
meant by cutting off the right hand or foot, or pluck-
ing out the right eye,
Christ is telling us how to deal with all things that
offend — that is, with all things that tempt, allure, or
compel us into sin. These things, He would tell us,
are dangerous in proportion as they are dear to us.
I. We may take them first as applying to the things
around us, and our means of communication with
them — the eye with which we see, the hand with which
we grasp, the foot with which we draw near to any-
thing good or bad, involves also the idea of these
things themselves. The world around us, great,
glorious, beautiful, teeming with life, budding with
promises, is not inaptly figured by those great forests
of the western continent where tropical growth decks
nature with the most gorgeous charms, and bud and
flower and tree fill the whole air with life and delight,
but where for a man to rest but one night under the
treacherous shade is danger, and often death. How
we may live in the world and escape these dangers
we will, if God permit, show in a future sermon on
this same text. To day let me be content with indi-
cating where the dangers lie.
II. But the threefold danger and the threefold
sacrifice indicated by our Lord deal also with thie
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XXI.] THE SALT OF THE EARTH. 205
corruption in our own flesh, and that both in its
grosser and its subtler form. From within, out of the
heart of man, proceeds all that most works his woe ;
when all hearts are laid bare before the great Judge
of all, or when now in self-examination and confes-
sion we lay them bare before our God, what different
motives come to light from those which appear before
the world. Dear as our very heart is some cherished
sin, cunning with the very wisdom of Hell is the
sophistry with which we veil it up, and call it by some
soft name, or justify it by some unreal motive. Judas,
who grudged what was spent on our Lord, pretended
to care for the poor. David, who wished to screen
his own adulterous longing and act, feigned great
friendship for Bathsheba's husband that night he
came home from the war. Scribe and Pharisee
hypocrites prayed openly and abundantly with the
voice to God, while they were courting the admiration
of men for themselves. All hearts were open to Him
who knew what was in man, and all hearts are open
now \ and He bids us still be brave and honest with
ourselves, examine the real motive of our actions, and
then stay the foot, hold back the hand ; close, nay,
if need be, pluck out the eye, rather than yield.
Pluck out the eye, for it is not only the development
of sin in act, it is the contemplation of sin with the
thought, that Christ calls Christians to forswear. And
some sins there are especially which in all times and
places, in the very presence of the pure and the holy,
the impure or the malignant or the covetous, can
commit greedily in their thought
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2o6 THE SALT OF THE EARTH [xxi.
•
But it is the subtler as well as the coarser fruits of
the corruption of the flesh with which we must deal.
There are certain virtues even, which by wrong
motive turn to sins. The clever thought ; wit ; de-
scriptive, conversational, oratorical powers; the prompt
movement, busy aspiring determination to get on;
the resolute attitude, the firm grasp, the gesture of
command, the special powers of the eye, the foot, the
hand ; the virtues, as a German writer has called them,
of penetration, of progress, of energy, even these
may interfere with our spiritual life, and if so, even
these must be renounced. Oh, but this is hard, — ^yes
indeed it is. And He who never exaggerated used
the language He did that we might know He was
speaking of something that was hard indeed now, and
warning us of something harder still hereafter.
For the things we are speaking of are the corrup-
tion of the flesh now in the living body, which we
must cut off and cut out if we would have the rest
healthy ; the worm that dieth not is the corruption
hereafter bred into a loathsome life out of itself — b,
perpetual corruption, which, ever producing itself,
gives ever food for the flame to feed upon. In the
fires of the Valley of Hinnom the flame anticipated
the worm, but in the fires of Gehenna hereafter, worm
and the flame, corruption and remorse, are ever feed-
ing and preying one upon the other. There is another
fire that may anticipate that; there is a salt which
prevents corruption. The great doctrine of sacri-
fice as the one means of resistance now and escape
hereafter, I will by God's help bring before you next
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XXI.] THE SALT OF THE EARTH 207
Sunday. To-day, for once at least in the year, let
us not flinch from the plain statements of God's
words. Let the easy-going, the rich, the self-indul-
gent, the careless and the profane, the sinner who
is just hesitating about his sin, and the saint that
thinks he stands secure, ask himself whether he
has ever counted the cost of present enjoyment,
or tried to look beyond the grave to which he
is going.
Then, let each and all be thankful that there is a
hope afforded : that there is the Cross of Christ, to
which we may flee to escape from the wrath to come :
that there is the spirit of self-sacrifice, by which we
may by His grace repeat in ourselves the principle
and the triumphs of His suflfering love.
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XXII.
SALTED WITH FIRE.
S. Mark ix. 49.
For every one shall he salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall
be salted with salt.
We confined ourselves last Sunday morning to
thoughts which were strictly introductory to the text
which we have before us. We saw how our Lord in
the most plain and startling manner put before those
who would hear Him the practical conditions of
their safety. We saw the most crucial tests applied
in matters relating both to our intercourse with the
world outside us, and the thoughts and predilections
of our own souls within. The cutting off the foot or
hand, the plucking out the eye, were explained as the
sacrificing that which is most valuable, most dear,
most important for us in this world; nay, the con-
demnation and rejection even of admirable qualities
and gifts, as well as the inward contemplation of sin-
ful thought, was put before us as necessary if we
were in earnest about our soul's salvation, if we
wished to escape that frightful condition of undying
death — the worm, which represents the principle of
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xxli.] SALTED WITH FIRE. 209
corruption in the dead body, ever breeding and re-
producing itself, and so eternally providing food for
the unquenchable flame to devour. We stand before
this picture, which is not only an illustration of
doctrine, but a representation of psychological facts,
and we muse upon that future condition here
revealed, where the flame is not only torture, but
torture produced by the very action of the Almighty
holiness of God, which must of itself be agony to
th^ sinner ; and the corruption, the undying worm,
the condition of those who, having refused to amend
when the voice of God called them, when the grace
of God was offered them, when the Spirit of God
pleaded with them, when the sacrifice of the Son of
God was revealed to them, when the patience of God
waited for them, and the presence of God strength-
ened them, — will then be banished from that presence,
withdrawn from that patience, cut off" from that
sacrifice, separated from that Spirit, deprived of the
means of grace, and removed from the sound of that
Voice that so long and so gently called them to repent-
ance. In the agony of remorse, in the depth of
corruption, in the society of devils, will regeneration,
will improvement be possible ? If it be, then we can
imagine that the cause of remorse and the source of
corruption may be removed ; or if the soul cease to
be immortal, we may believe that the material for
suffering can be absolutely consumed. Till then we
must see that the doctrine of eternal punishment is
not only an awful sentence promulgated with full
warning by our Lord, but an inevitable necessity,
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2IO SALTED WITH FIRE. [xxii.
arising out of the immortality of the soul and the
laws of spiritual life.
From this may the good God deUver us ! And that
we may be so delivered, our Saviour speaks with such
merciful sternness, and bids us surrender anything,
everything, now, rather than wait to realize that ruin.
And He too proceeds to do this, not only on His
own infallible word, but condescends to refer His
warning to a general principle. This must be so,
He says, this renunciation is the only means of
escape, " for every one must be salted with fire, and
every sacrifice must be salted with salt."
In other words, the principle of life is the principle
of sacrifice.
I. In examining this, we will take the words of the
text first in their literal sense. The key-word is " Salt"
This carries us back to the older dispensation and
God's commands to Moses. If we refer to Lev. ii.
13, we find this : "And every oblation of thy meat
offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt
thou sufier the salt of the covenant of thy God
to be lacking from thy meat offering; with all thine
offerings thou shalt offer salt." Again, in Ezekiel
xliii. 24, we read in the prophecy of the restoration
of the Church of God : " The priests shall cast salt
upon them, and they shall offer them up for a burnt
offering unto the Lord." Again, in Numbers xviii.
19, we read : " It is a covenant of salt for ever before
the Lord unto^ thee and to thy seed with thee."
Once more, in 2 Chron. xiii. 5, the prophet Abijah
says : " Ought ye not to know that the Lord God of
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XXII.] SALTED WITH FIRE. 211
Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever,
even to him and to his sons by a covenant of salt ? *'
From these passages it would seem that we may learn,
(i) the literal fact that salt was to be used in all the
sacrifices of the Jewish law ; both the burnt offering,
which was consumed on the altar, and the meat
offering, which was not burnt buf kept to be eaten.
(2) That this salt had a mystical meaning representing
an abiding covenant between God and His people.
So that when it was absent the sacrifice offered was
not acceptable before God, inasmuch as the terms of
the covenant were violated by man who ofiered it ;
and that it became a figure so thoroughly understood,
that it was applied not only to the actual sacrifices,
but to promises made by God to man, nay, like many
another holy thing, found its shadow in the oriental
idea that a covenant of peace must exist, at any rate
for a time, between those who have partaken of salt
together. (3) From Ezekiel applying it in the lan-
guage of prophecy to things yet to come, and from
our Lord adopting it on the occasion of the text, we
gather that it is of lasting application, that the principle
involved in the type is one that is to obtain in the mil-
lennial restoration, as well as in all the struggles and
temptations of the days of the present dispensation.
Then let us proceed to ask what is it that this salt
represents ? How is it that it is the sign of a covenant
with God ?
Salt in itself is a thing that is at once remarkably
akin to, and strongly antagonistic to, fire. In its
sharp corrosive properties it is akin to fire; on the
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212 SALTED WITH FIRE. [xxii.
Other hand, it preserves that on which it is sprinkled
both from corruption and from fire ; as anyone knows,
if used in sufficient quantities it will even quench fire ;
and as philosophers tell us, if the ashes of any substance
that has been burned are carefiilly washed, there will
be found a residuum unconsumed of salt. In these
respects, as being a type of purity, and of endurance,
that preserves itself and that which is saturated with
it, it is an intelligible t)^e of the purity and endurance
(of God's covenant with His people. Again, in its
relation both to corruption and to fire, it has in this
place a distinct reference both to the undying worm
and the unquenchable fire.
II. But we must press on, and as briefly as we
can remind ourselves that the principle of sacrifice,
with all its numerous and minute details as laid
down in the Mosaic Law, was not an arbitrary series
of commands. It was the system which explained
and represented in action the very circumstance and
condition of human life. It kept ever before the
mind of the sacrificer the power which evil had
obtained over the life of man, and indicated the
means by which the life could be delivered from the
evil. We do not say that this was consciously so
before the mind of the Jew. He had not the key
which we have. He, in common with every child of
nature, recognized in his own heart the mysterious
requirement of propitiatory sacrifice, and, in the
condition and with the obedience of a child not
capable of being trusted with reasons, offered that
sacrifice to God as He commanded it.
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XXII.] SALTED WITH FIRE, 213
But we have the key. All is explained to us in
Christ. And therefore we are not obliged — though
it would be well indeed for us to do so — to master
all the marvellous typology of the Old Testament in
order to understand the broad principles of sacrifice ;
these we have clearly brought before us in Christ by
the nature and the greatness of His sacrifice, viz. the
depth to which sin had lowered us, and the power of
the author of sin, the need of some one who should
be able to present some consideration or offering that
should vindicate the majesty of the outraged Law, and,
by paying the penalty incurred, render it possible for
the offenders to be brought once more into com-
munication with the Author of that Law.
And this principle Christ worked out, both by His
life and death. His death was the final rendering up
of Himself to suffer the punishment which Sin, in the
humanity whose nature He had assumed, deserved.
But His life was equally an exemplification of sacrifice
in the complete surrender of Himself in His human
Body, Soul, and Spirit, to do the will of His heavenly
Father, and under all circumstances, especially those
which are most distressing to humanity, to render the
offering of a perfect obedience to the Divine Law.
He obeyed the Law first perfectly : then He paid the
penalty for that Law being broken by others. Even if
His sufferings had been less intense than they were,
nothing could more fully unfold the principle of
sacrifice. Here we find the explanation of the salt sprin-
kled on the two kinds of sacrifice. In the obedience
of Christ unto death, even the death of the cross, we
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214 SALTED WITH FIRE, [xxii.
have the burnt offering consumed : in the obedience
of the life, which remains to strengthen us by the
force of its example, nay, to communicate its very
force to us now by a sacramental participation, we
have the antitype of the meat offering. But both were
sprinkled with the same. " Every sacrifice is salted
with salt." Both the life and the death of Christ were
what they were in their holiness, their duty, and their
power, by the one principle that pervaded them, that
seasoned, sanctified, consecrated the whole sacrifice
— the principle of self-denial. It is this that connects
this warning and these denunciations with the subject-
matter of the rest of the chapter. The desire for
pre-eminence among the disciples; their jealousy o^
those without who could do miracles in their Master's
name, though not outwardly united to them ; the rebuke
in the calling the little child, and the blessing, not on
those who can work the mightiest miracles, but who
can recognize Christ and minister to Him in the least
and the lowest ; the emphatic declaration that anyone
who would hold a first place in His service must be
the least and lowest of all, — all this must be taken
into account in estimating His meaning in the renun-
ciation of what is dear to us, and in explaining
the fire and the salt with which our life is to be
salted. All this our dear Lord exemplified in Him-
self, from His despised birth at Bethlehem to
His washing the disciples' feet and being crucified
in His innocence like a malefactor between two
criminals.
No words can express, deep meditation in long
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XXII.] SALTED WITH FIRE. 215
silence can alone bring to our minds, any even ap-
proximate thought of the suffering of the Son of God ;
the humility which led Him to submit to that suffer-
ing, the greatness of our sin which needed it, and the
love that prompted Him to undertake it But having
by the grace of God formed some estimate of it, we
sit down beneath the Cross, and gaze upon that sacri-
fice. We think on every mental pang of shame,
desertion, betrayal, loneliness, and the indescribable
shrinking from the imputation of that mass of sin and
corruption which He, the Holy One, saw in all its loath-
some clinging defilement, as He undertook to bear it.
We think on the life of self-denial, — the homeless
wanderer, the enthusiastic teacher, deemed a madman
by his own relations ; the unrequited acts of love, the
weariness which was never allowed to interfere with
His ministration to a soul in need \ the long hours of
retirement and prayer, the attempts upon His life, the
final scene of Bloody agony, Bloody scourging. Blood-
stained Cross and Bleeding wounds ; we sit for awhile,
we think of this, and we ask ourselves, " Is this an
example or even a type of life on earth ? Oh, what is
our vapid existence, where is our sacrifice? Have we
not tried to offer to the Lord our God of that which
doth cost us nothing ? "
III. And if there be one here who feels, whether
for the first time or not, how miserable is the contrast
between his hfe and his Lord's, and would ask what
is it is wanting, let me reply, Have you applied the
test in our text ? " Every one," that is, every one who
would not be handed over to the undying worm and
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2i6 SALTED WITH FIRE. [xxii.
the fire that shall not be quenched — "every one
shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be
salted with salt" He who would escape the undying
fire must anticipate it ; he who would be fi-ee firom that
imperishable corruption must take now that which
shall be a preventative to it. He must take his life
now, and present it to God. The fire of God's holi-
ness, the salt of self-denial, will be the two sanctifying
principles. The fire of God's holiness by its powei
melting, refining, our coarser nature, purging out all
that is corruptible, purifying all that remains, aided by
the action of self-denial, wliich, like the salt, at once
akin to and antagonistic to the fire, aids the work
now by the voluntary surrender of all that tempts to
sin, and prevents the action of the fire being eternal
hereafter, by preventing that selfishness which is the
source of all our sin, and breeds the endless corruption
on which the wrath of God is poured out for ever and
ever.
We are very far from having gone to the extent
of this subject. But, brethren, can we not make an
effort to make our lives Divine, to give them up to
God, to consecrate them with the salt of self-denial,
which is the covenant of renunciation of evil between
us and God ? Can we not pray that the fire of God
may descend upon us, not to destroy us, but so to
consume the sacrifice prepared in our hearts, that from
henceforth we may bum with a holy love — that on the
altar of our lives the fire of self-sacrifice may be ever
burning, may never be put out? And do we want a
Priest to offer this sacrifice of ourselves ? We have
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XXII.] SALTED WITH FIRE. 217
such an High Priest; one who Himself was made perfect
through suffering ; and now, in tlie might of that sacri-
fice of Himself holds back for awhile all the powers of
Death and Hell that sinners may have time to repent,
and pleads for a fallen world.
While He still stands as our Intercessor at the right
hand of God, shall we not approach, not in words,
dear brethren, but, in honest reality of purpose and
life, pray Him to give us grace to bear the salting o^
that holy fire now, to purge and to purify us by it ;
and when in the New Jerusalem the Saints themselves
are gathered for an offering, that He would present us
faultless before His Father's throne?
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XXIII.
SALT IN OURSELVES.
S. Mark ix. 50.
Have salt in yourselves ^ and have peace one with another.
Our Lord passes from the fire that never shall be
quenched to the fire that salts, — fi-om that remote fire
to the mildest salt which contains fire. And in so
doing He indicates in the form of a command how
that salting with fire is to influence us in ourselves,
and affect our conduct to others : in short, how this
salt is to influence the discharge of our duty both
to God and man.
I. As to salt in ourselves, (i .) We remember that
this salt is the principle of self-deniaL Saturating
our lives with the renunciation of Self, which is the
renunciation of evil and the antidote to corruption, it
fulfils the type of the salt which was sprinkled on
every sacrifice by the command of God, to be the
token of His covenant with His people. So that a
sacrifice offered to God in the Jewish law without
salt was an abomination, and so a life professedly
dedicated to His service without self-denial is a
mockery and an offence.
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XXIII.] SALT IN OURSELVES. 219
This state of self denial we saw showed itself most
perfectly in the life and death of the Son of God,
who came from heaven, not to do His own will, but the
will of Him that sent Him, and who, though obedient
unto death, found that self-denial His very meat that
supported Him in life, and the means of His victory,
exaltation, and glory in His death. And mark, before
passing on to the next point, how it was that Christ
was able to offer such a sacrifice, what it was He
offered, and how. It was not the "thousands of rams
nor ten thousands of rivers of oil," it was not anything
outside of Himself or short of Himself that He
offered, but Himself entirely ; and that He might do
it, that He might like other priests have something,
some victim, to offer, that He might have that to offer
in which all men, the greatest and the least alike,
might be able in their degree to follow Him, He came
into the world, as S. Paul tells us, in fulfilment of the
Scripture, " Sacrifice and meat offenng thou wouldest
not, but a Body hast thou prepared me." He came
into the world, not as a spirit, not as a phantom,
not as an appearance, not as God revealed in some
form of angelic mould hitherto unheard of by man ;
but He took man's nature in the womb of the Blessed
Virgin, of her substance, and was found in fashion
like a man. That Holy Body was never defiled by
sin, nor degraded by self-indulgence, — tempted by
Satan with allurements and terrors, buffeted, wounded,
bruised, rent by the cruelty of man in every action
of mind and heart and hand, it was a pure offering
salted with self-denial, of sweet savour before the
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220 SALT IN OURSELVES, [xxiii.
mercy-seat of God. (2.) That salt, our Lord tells us,
must flavour our life. It is this which will enable us
to do in our degree what He did ; it is this which will
enable us to listen and to obey when S. Paul says, " I
beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of
God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable
service," — Christ's Body; our bodies; each the ma-
terial for sacrifice. How is it with ours? Do you
see, brethren, bodies, not only soul and spirit, but
bodies. The work is so very practical, so material
some people would say. But never mind the word,
look at the fact. Your bodies are demanded as a
sacrifice in the name of the Lord. Not only the
spirit which by the regenerating power of the Holy
Spirit wishes to serve God always, nor the soul which
with its intellectual powers stretches out towards the
spirit when the Divine light illumines it, and turns
obstinately downward to chase objects of self-will,
or to pry into " chambers of unclean imagery," when it
turns away firom that light; no, nor the soul, again,
which in its warm affections becomes at times so god-
like in the yearnings of its love, so degraded, so
beastlike when that love becomes simply the passion-
ate and the lewd, so fiend-like when, with inverted
action, it pours itself forth in the power of hate ; no,
it is neither soul nor spirit that S. Paul specifies here,
but the body, the creaturely body, the shell, the
prison-house, as well as the tool or instrument of the
soul and spirit, that is to be dedicated as a sacrifice
to God, sanctified by the salt of self-denial. And
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XXIII.] SALT m OURSELVES. 221
how? Hear a holy man of olden times explain it.
" How can the body," he says, " become a sacrifice ?
Let the eye look upon nothing evil, and a sacrifice
is made. Let the tongue reftise to say anything
disgraceful, and there is an oblation. Let the hand
do nothing lawless, and a whole burnt sacrifice is
offered. But further, this is not enough ; but there
must be by us also the working of good deeds, that
the hand make the sacrifice of almsgiving, and the
mouth may bless those that revile, and the ear may
be open ever to listen to holy discourse. For the
sacrifice hath nothing that is impure, the sacrifice is
the first-fruits of all the rest. And so let us from
hand, and foot, and mouth, and everything that be-
longs to us, offer the first-fruits to God." (S. Chrys.,
Alford, in loc)
(3.) But how can this offering of ourselves be
presented or be acceptable to God? The sacrifice
can only be presented by the priest Where are the
priests for all the offerings of Christian people?
Brethren, mistake not. He whose glorious Resur-
rection we are now trying to prepare ourselves to
celebrate, when He won the victory, won it for us, as
well as for Himself. He has ascended to His throne ;
He pleads before the mercy-seat the sacrifice of His
own Body, radiant with the wounds that told of the
strife and that won the victory, He entered into the
Holy place on High ; but He made us also kings and
priests. Every one, by His work and by our spiritual
sonship, belongs to a " holy priesthood " before the
Lord. And your work, dear brethren, one and all, as
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222 SAL T IN OURSEL VES. [xxiii.
priests, is to oflfer the sacrifice of yourselves, your own
bodies, in a holy service before God.
But again, how do we know that that sacrifice is
accepted? How can we, impure, offer anything so
impure as ourselves, and hope to be accepted ? The
salt, brethren, — the salt, and the fire. Every one must
be salted with fire, and every sacrifice must be salted
with salt. The power of Christ's holiness, not only
imputed to us for justification, but imparted to us for
sanctification, consumes the evil in the sacrifice ;
renders it first acceptable to God for the sake of
Christ, and then renders it acceptable by the in-
dwelling Spirit, which conforms the life to the life of
Christ : and here comes in the salt That conformity
to the will and the life of Christ wrought by the
Spirit in the hearts of the redeemed is only wrought
by a constant struggle, the corrosive, corrective, salt
ever checking the corrupting tendency of self-indul-
gence j the searching influence of the Refiner's fire
melting the hard, throwing out the dross, till the pure
surface of the soul reflects the Refiner's image as He
sits and gazes on it These are figures of the way in
which the sacrifice is made acceptable to God, first
for the sake of Christ, and afterwards by the power
of Christ's Spirit.
(4.) But let us not think that there is nothing more
special. There is a special way in which we are
presented to God, and are made ** acceptable in the
Beloved." In the Holy Sacrament of the altar we,
feeding on the Holy Mysteries, are made one with
Christ ; we dwell in Christ, and Christ with us. We
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XXIII.] SALT IN OURSELVES. 223
are then made partakers of the sacrifice, and by
feeding on it we are enabled to say, in the language
of the Church, " here," that is in the Holy Sacrament,
" we ofifer and present unto Thee ourselves, our souls
and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively
sacrifice unto Thee." Christ, as we have said, presents
His Body in the Holy place on High : here below
we, in the " holy places made with hands, which are
the figures of the true," present our bodies, which are
acceptable by the working and the indwelling of the
Spirit with His fire of purification, and are accepted
in Christ the Beloved, as united with Him, and for
His sake, whose sacrifice put away the barrier of sin
that was between us and God.
(5.) Viewed in this light, the Holy Sacrament is not
only a service, where the priest and the people with
\i\m plead the one sacrifice of Christ once offered,
but where they also o^er the sacrifice of themselves.
But every sacrifice is salted with salt. Have salt
in yourselves. See the need of searching self-exami-
nation and preparation, before you draw near to that
holy table. Come without preparation, come with
your easy ways, come with your compromise between
Christ and the world, come with your sins still fester-
ing in your bosoms unconfessed before God or man,
come without the smart of discipline, and you come
to offer yourselves a sacrifice without salt — Christians
without a cross. And see the result, — the undying
worm already indicating his loathsome presence in
the weakness of your good resolutions, in the languor
of your prayers, in the distaste for spiritual exercises.
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224 ^^^ T IN OURSEL VES. [xxiii.
in the relish for things that are of the earth, earthy, —
in the clouded faith that sees nothing beyond this
world, in the sordid appetite that longs for gain, in the
frivolous mind that will have pleasure, in the morbid
taste that dwells on evil thoughts, in the taint as of a
charnel-house, that breathes through the unreality of
self-indulgent Christianity. Picture to yourselves a
sacrifice, instead of the spotless unblemished lamb of
the first year, a deformed mass sinking into putre-
faction amid the splendours of the altar and the
temple, and you have an image of the Christian
heart drawing nigh to present at the Christian altar
the sacrifice of a body, soul, and spirit, redolent with
the world or reeking with its sins.
II. But this principle of self-denial, this salt upon
the sacrifice, is not only the means whereby under
God's blessing the corruption of our life is removed,
and we find ourselves in a healthy growth, striving
vigorously, and with strong desire reaching out to
those good things which God has prepared for them
that love Him ; but it is also the means whereby we
are most forcibly reminded of our duty to our' neigh-
bour and enabled to practise that.
" Have salt in yourselves," says our Lord, " and be
at peace one with another." The salt once more is
self-denial, self-abnegation. It is the spirit which our
Lord exhibited in Himself when He washed the feet
of His own disciples \ and which He inculcated over
and over again in such language as, "Whosoever
among you," that is among My followers, " will be
first, let him be last of all and servant of all." It
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XXIII.] SALT m OURSELVES, 225
was this spirit which S. Paul inculcated saying " but
in lowliness of spirit let each esteem other better
than themselves." It is the only real sure foundation
of peace in communities or comfort in families, and
let me simply illustrate it with one maxim — that it does
not exist in the heart of those who find fault with
Others for not exercising it towards them. If you, my
brother or my sister, feel yourselves aggrieved by
others, by being what the world calls " put upon," do
not fire up in resentment and accuse others of in-
juriously forgetting their Christian duties to you, but
rather in a Christlike spirit deny yourself, mortify
your feeling of indignation, receive the affront with
meekness, and conquer the offender with love.
III. But there is here also a special aspect which
with Easter close before us we must not ignore.
Preparing yourselves with stem self-examination,
judging yourselves that ye be not judged, and then
self-condemned coming in answer to your Saviour's
loving invitation that you may find in His Holy Sacra-
ment the crown of pardon that awaits the penitent,
the food that weary pilgrims love, you will not in
your preparation forget this self-denying humility
towards your neighbour. Hear thy Lord again, " If
thou bring thy gift ^o the altar, and there remem-
berest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave
there thy gift before the altar [turn back, even when
you have made up your mind to stay] and go thy way,
first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and
ofier thy gift." If he will not be reconciled, thou at
Q
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226 SALT IN OURSELVES, [xxiii.
least wilt have done thy part, then come, and come
for his sake as well as thine own, pray for him, for ha
needs thy prayer, pray then especially when the sacri-
fice of Christ is commemorated and pleaded, and thy
plea shall be heard, for him and for thyself.
IV. But lastly, brethren, a question. Why does the
religion of Christ not do more than it does in the
world ? Because the salt is so terribly left out from
the sacrifice. Because we Christians, who ought to
be the salt of the earth, have so lamentably lost our
savour, not that there are not Saints now known to
God, bold as S. Peter, pure as S. John, active as S.
Paul ; but the mass, brethren, the mass of us who
profess and call ourselves Christians, where is ovu*
salt in oiurselves ? where is our love for others ? The
absence of that salt is not the parent of love, though
it is the parent of a spurious misnamed charity, a
charity which shrinks from the truth, but not from
petty ill nature ; which flinches from self-denial, and
facing the plain meaning of God's words, which
delights in a false security that too much resembles
that cessation of pain when mortification has set in
on the wounded limb. The salt and the love will
speak plainly in God's behalf, but will not rashly
condemn another who may be following Christ per-
haps quite as earnestly though in another way from
itself. Where dogma must come in, it will set that
dogma plainly before the consciences of those with
whom it is concerned ; it will leave to Christ Himself,
or to His voice speaking through His whole Church,
to thunder anathemas against those who difier.
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XXIII.] SALT IN OURSELVES, 227
But as to ourselves. Ye, we, by our Saviour's
words are the salt of the earth, " but if the salt have
lost its savour wherewith shall it be salted? It is hence-
forth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden
under foot of men." The saltless salt, is not that it
which makes religion itself a stumbling-block to the
world : is not that it which makes the account of our
religious apparatus, our comfortable lives, inoculated
as it were with a modified form of goodness lest we
should be attacked by the true soul-absorbing, self-
annihilating religion of the Cross, seem almost a satire
when it is compared with the lives of the Martyrs, and
the Church of the Catacombs? Why do not wars
cease ? why is profligacy rampant ? why is not the
world subdued before the power of Christ ? Because
the Church has allied itself to the world, because
Christians are incapable of imparting purity and
health to others, when they have lost their tone them-
selves. The Cross, rebelled against as a sj-mbol on
our altars, is flaunted as an ornament on our persons.
Peter, who would go with his Lord to prison and to
death, stands among his Lord's enemies, warms him-
self at their fire, and assimilates himself to their
language and demeanour.
But oh, what a life and what a calling is ours ! When
our hearts are really prepared as a sacrifice, the fire that
kindles them descends from on high. Once at even-
ing time on CarmePs side ere yet the sun sank over
the western sea, the fire of God came down in answer
to the Prophet's prayer ; it burned the wood, it burned
the victim, it licked up the water in the trench, it
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228 SALT IN OURSELVES. [xxiii.
consumed the very stones of the altar, and then, ere
yet the darkness set in, the curling smoke and the
leaping flames carried the sacrifice it consiuned up
again under the blue vault of heaven. Oh that the
fire of God would descend, even the power of His
Holy Spirit, that He would kindle the sacrifice of our
heart ere yet the sun of life goes down, consume the
hard and earthly, consume our very hearts with love
of Him, and then draw us up again in the influence
of the ever ascending power of sacrifice up above the
world which Christ's sacrifice overthrew, up to the
Heaven which He has won for us.
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XXIV.
THE INEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY.
Acrs xiv. 14-15.
Which when the Apostles^ Barnabas and Paul, heard of they
rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out and
saying. Sirs, why dp ye these things ?
S. Barnabas, whose name signifies the Son of Con-
solation, is continually brought before us as a charac-
ter of great tenderness and sympathy. He is de-
scribed indeed as a good man, and full of the Holy
Ghost and of Faith, and we know that the gifts of
the Holy Ghost are manifold, and implant and pro-
duce every ray of goodness and beauty that makes
up the clear light of the Divine character. But
among all the gifts, gentle love seems to have dis-
tinguished S Barnabas. His conduct to Saul after
his conversion, his ministry to the sufferers at Antioch,
the part he took in the quarrel with S. Paul about
S. John Mark, all these illustrate the tenderness
of his disposition. That this degenerated into a
fault is evident from S. Paul's language in the Epistle
Xo the Galatians, where he blames S. Barnabas for
giving way to the pressure of popular religious opinion
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230 INEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY, [xxiv.
at Antioch, and following S. Peter in a dissimulation
that was to please a certain section of the Jewish
Christians.
In these ways this great Apostle represented both
in its beauty and its weakness a phase of character
which is very highly esteemed at the present day in
the religious world. It is a character which is very
winning in its amiability and ready sympathy; but
which sinks into something very like indiflference or
dishonesty rather than face the unpleasantness of
putting disagreeable truths forward, and acting con-
sistently on them.
On this very account it leems all the more profit-
able and interesting that on this day, when we would
honour the memory of this great Apostle and thank
God for his martyrdom, we should dwell for a little
while on an occurrence where Christian courage and
firmness were conspicuously displayed by this gentle
Saint.
The text represents him and S. Paul rushing out
of the house where they were (for the reading of
our Bibles running /«, sf^ems now generally con-
demned in favour of the other running out), and
meeting the priest of Jupiter who presided over
the city, and who had brought oxen and garlands
and was come with a great crowd, and now stood'
at the door of the house, about to do sacrifice to
them. The object of the Apostles of course was
to stop the idolatrous intention of the townspeople.
The proposal had been made in the rude dialect of
Lycaonia, and the Apostles consequently had not
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XXIV.] INEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY, 231
understood what was being said. Now they see it
they are filled with horror; they rend their clothes,
the sign of intense grief and indignation, they spring
out of the house, they earnestly address the multitude,
they tell them they are men of like passions with
themselves; that their great object was to persuade
them to leave off this very idolatry which was being
attempted now towards themselves, and to worship
instead the one God, who had never left Himself
without witness even among the heathen, though for
a long time He had winked at their ignoiance and
depravity. With firmness but with difficulty they
succeed in arresting the design. The people are
discontented at this refusal ; they listen to the sugges-
tions of the malicious Jews who had come from Antioch
to Iconium; doubtless these employ the argument
they had used against our Lord, that it was by magic
and the power of evil spirits the Apostles worked
their miracles, and they persuaded the people of
Lystra to stone Paul, and leave him for dead.
So much apparently for the honest resistance of
Barnabas and Paul to the proffered honour of the
people, so much for the progress made by them in
instilling religion into the Lycaonian hearts. So
would scoff the Jew then and the sceptic now. And
after all, what could the Apostles do but reject the
idolatrous homage ? says the Pharisee now ; so rank a
sin they could not but denounce.
The result of their opposition to the popular will
we must leave for consideration another time. The
point on which I wish to dwell for a short time this
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232 INEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY, [xxiv.
morning is the nature of the temptation to which the
Apostles were exposed, and the qualities displayed
in opposing it.
At the present day there are a great many people
whose motto is "Expediency." They are a numerous
class, and with many subdivisions. Some are indo-
lent, and their favourite application of their doctrine
is "Let well alone," or "Things have done well enough
for the last two hundred years, why bring them up to
unsettle men's minds and cause divisions now ? "
Others are more active. They recognize the existence
of many evils, and they wish to deal with them, but
at the same time they do not wish to give oflfence.
They value a character for gentleness, they say truly
that love is the greatest of all qualities, but they add
untruly that love precludes definiteness, sternness, seve-
rity. They boast that they belong to a tolerant Church
without having ever mastered the doctrines of the
Church sufficiently to know in what sense that expres-
sion is true, and in what sense it is a disastrous error.
They wish to strengthen their hands by alliances on
all sides, and while they are anxious, as they ought to
be, to find points of agreement between all those who
really believe in the work and the Divinity of Christ,
they treat as trifles, which they ought not to do,
glaring and evident causes of difference based on
the acceptance or non-acceptance of certain truths.
They are afraid of the name of bigotry ; they shrink
from the idea of judgment to come ; theyflinch from
making obedience to Christ's plain commands the
test of Christian life and eternal prospects. They
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XXIV.] INEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY, 233
boast of a Faith so simple that it would make all the
Bible except a few verses a superfluous treatise, or a
practical love so diffusive that it ignores the principles
which the Bible has placed as bounds and landmarks.
There are yet again others who go further; who
recognize the evil of certain forms of belief or lines
of practice, but tolerate and even adopt them because
they hope to win by them, or to make use of them
against those who at present hold them ; or with more
astounding audacity, whilst they still profess to bear
the name of Christian themselves, openly and avow-
edly support some iniquitous transaction because it is
necessary for reasons of state.
Against all these in all their variety S. Barnabas
the gentle in to-day*s lesson offers a striking testimony.
After healing the lame man, he and S. Paul were to
be worshipped as gods by the populace. They
refused the homage; they rejected it with horror. Of
course they did, we are told; how could they do other-
wise? How could they commit such a sin against
God, against the very principle they were come to
teach, as to accept it ? How indeed, except on the
principle of expediency? How much they might
have gained by accepting it. How, on the principle
of seeing good in things evil, they might have recog-
nized in the shout ** The gods are come down to us in
the likeness of men," a glimmering idea of the Incar-
nation ; by joining themselves on this broad platform,
how they might have conciliated a hearing for the
great Christian doctrine. Then again by keeping the
people in good humour, how great an influence they
R
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234 INEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY, [xxnr.
might have retained over them, and led them to a
willing and pleasant intercourse, nay, even more
directly, what influence they might have held over
them, and ordered them to receive the new doctrines
and practise the new rites of worship. And how easy
to argue that there was no sin when they themselves
inwardly rejected the worship, or pleaded that it was
only accepted by them representatively for the God
whom they served. How easy, in fact, to argue that
to do a great right, they might do a little wrong, and
without any surrender of the truth in their own hearts
might ally themselves with the people, and in the
bond of universal brotherhood lead them by means of
their own errors to the knowledge and the practice of
the truth. The temptation was just to accept for the
moment a little offering of homage, and in so doing
to win the whole city to their way of thinking.
But does there not come at this point the thought
of this very temptation, plied in the most cunning
and daring way that preternatural power could suggest
on the largest of all possible scales ? Are we not
carried in thought to the mountain-top, and the
figures standing there with all the world's glory and
all the life and happiness of humanity spread out to
view, and the tempter saying " All these things will I
give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me"?
" One little act of homage, one little word of ac-
knowledgment and I, the prince of this world, will
retire. A bloodless victory shall be thine, the
world and all its forces shall be thine, not mine."
Brethren, what was the answer? What was the
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XXIV.] INEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY, 235
answer in effect of Barnabas and Paul, when idol-
atrous Lystra was at their feet? What should be
our answer when the strife of tongues is fierce ; when
the glare of infidelity fixes its glance of hate upon
the Cross; when friends seem few, and the faith is
assaulted, and men's hearts wax cold in love, and the
voice of popular opinion speaks of universal brother-
hood at the expense of the Fatherhood of God, or
of general agreement on condition of renouncing
everything that is positive enough to make a bulwark
or a bond ; when we are told we dare not speak of
orthodoxy, and that truth is exactly what every one
of the millions of men chooses to think it is ; when, on
the other hand, we are wooed softly to surrender and
to retain our popularity at the expense of our prin-
ciples; when we are told that we shall win more
souls by surrendering disputed points; or when within
ourselves our own weakness begs us not to forfeit our
character for liberality and good nature, not to put
before our people, if we are Priests, doctrines which
are unpalatable, and not to practise, if we are laymen,
observances which provoke scorn or dislike, when the
temptation is to surrender a little truth that we may
gain a great deal in the eyes of men — ^what must
our answer be? The answer in effect of Barnabas
and Paul at Lystra, the answer of our Lord in the
wilderness, "Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is
written. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
Him only shalt thou serve." This answer involves
the Catholic Faith whole and undefiled ; it is compatible
with love for the souls of men that stops not short of
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236 2NEXPEDIENCE OF EXPEDIENCY, [xxiv.
dying for them; This answer against tremendous odds
was made in the strength of the Spirit, perhaps under
the encouragement of the lion-hearted S. Paul, by the
gentle Barnabas; it was made by Christ in the day
of His humanity; it may be made by anyone,
however weak, if made in reliance upon Christ ; just
with the same difficulty, just with the same force, as it
was made by any one of the noble army of Martyrs,
by Evangelists, Apostle or Prophet whose memories
are honoured by the Church below, and whose souls
are in the safe keeping of God, all of whom we in
our weakness may remember that it was written that
they too ** out of weakness were made strong."
THE END.
LONDON*. R. CLAY> SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
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June 1874.
A Catalogue of Theological Books,
with a Short Account of their
Character and Aim,
Published by
MAOMILLAI^T AI^D 00.
Bedford Street, Strand, London, IV. C.
Abbott (Rev. E. A.)— Works by the Rev. E. A. Abbott,
D.D., Head Master of the City of London SchooJ.
BIBLE LESSONS. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6^.
* ' Wise, suggestive, and really profound initiation into religious thought. "
— Guardian. The Bishop of St. David's, in his speech at the Edtuation
Conference at Abergwilly, says he thinks ''''nobody could read them without
being the better for them himself, and being also able to see how this difficult
duty of imparting a sdiirtd religious education may be effected.^^
THE GOOD VOICES: A Child's Guide to the Bible.
With upwards of 50 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. cloth gilt. $s.
^'It would not be easy to co??ibine simplicity with fulness and depth of
meaning more successfully than Mr. Abbott has done." — Spectator. The
Times says — ^'Mr. Abbott writes with clearness, simplicity, and the deepest
religious feeling. ' '
PARABLES FOR CHILDREN. Crown 8vo. cloth gilt.
3J. 6d.
" They are simple and direct in meaning and told in plain language,
and are therefore well adapted to their purpose?^ — Guardian.
I
40C0.6. 74.
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Ainger (Rev. Alfred).— SERMONS PREACHED IN
THE TEMPLE CHURCH. By the Rev. Alfred Ainger,
M. A. of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Reader at the Temple Church.
Extra fcap. 8vo. 6j.
This volume contains twenty-four Sermons preached at various times
during the last feiv years in the Temple Church. ^^Itis" the British
Quarterly says, *'^ the fresh unconventional talk of a clear independent
thinker y addressed to a congregation of thinkers .... Thoughtful men will
be greatly charmed by this little volume, "
Alexander.— THE LEADING IDEAS of the GOSPELS.
Five Sermons preached before the University of Oxford in 1870 —
71. By William Alexander, D.D., Brasenose College; Lord
Bishop of Derry and Raphao ; Select Preacher. Cr. 8vo. j\s. 6d.
^* Eloquence and force of language, clearness of statement, and a hearty
appreciation of the grandeur and importance of the topics upon which he
writes characterize his sermons. " — Record.
Arnold.— A BIBLE READING BOOK FOR SCHOOLS.
The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration (Isaiah,
Chapters 40 — 66). Arranged and Edited for Young Learners. By
Matthew Arnold, D.C.L., formerly Professor of Poetry in the
University of Oxford, and Fellow of Oriel. Third Edition. i8mo.
cloth. IS.
The Times says — " Whatever may be the fate of this little book in
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this book, it will enable its pupils to understand Isaiah, a great advantage
compared with other establishments which do not avail themselves of it. "
Baring-Gould.— LEGENDS OF OLD TESTAMENT
CHARACTERS, from the Talmud and other sources. By the
Rev. S. Baring-Gould, M.A., Author of "Curious Myths of
the Middle Ages," "The Origin and Development of Religious
Belief," "In Exitu Israel," etc. In two vols, crown 8vo. ids.
Vol. I. Adam to Abraham. Vol. II. Melchizidek to Zechariah.
He has collected from the Talmud and other sources, Jewish andMahom-
medan, a large number of curious and interesting legends concerning the
principal characters of the Old Testament, comparing these frequently with
similar legends current among many of the peoples, savage and civilised,
all over the world. *^ These volumes contain much that is strange, and to
the ordinary English reader, very novel." — Daily News.
Barry, Alfred, D.D.— The ATONEMENT of CHRIST.
Six Lectures delivered in Hereford Cathedral during Holy Week,
1 87 1. By Alfred Barry, D.D., D.C.L., Canon of Worcester,
Principal of King's College, London. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
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In writing these Sermons^ it has been the object of Canon Barry to set
forth the deep practical importance oj the doctrinal truths of the Atone-
ment. *^ The one truth^^^ says the Preface, ''^ which, beyond all others,
I desire that these may suggest, is the inseparable unity which must exist
between Christian doctrine, even in its more mysterious forms, and Christ-
ian morality or devotion. They are a slight contribution to the plea of
that connection of Religion and Theology, which in our oivn time is so
frequently and, as it seems to me, so unreasonably denied^ The Guardian
calls them ^^ striking and eloquent lectures.^"*
Benham.— A COMPANION TO THE LECTIONARY,
being a Commentary on the Proper Lessons for Sundays and
Holydays. By the Rev. W. Benham, B.D., Vicar of Margate.
Crown 8vo. *is. 6d.
The Author's object is to give the reader a clear understanding of the
Lessons of the Church, which he does by means of gene7'al and special in-
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presenting the least difficulty. '''A very useful book. Mr. Benham has
produced a good and welcome companion to our revised Lectionary. Its
contents will, if not very original or profound, prove to be sensible and
practical, and often suggestive to the preacher and the Sunday School
teacher. They will also furnish some excellent Sunday reading for private
hours. ^^ — Guardian.
Bernard.— THE PROGRESS OF DOCTRINE IN THE
NEW TESTAMENT, considered in Eight Lectures before the
University of Oxford in 1864. By Thomas D. Bernard, M.A.,
Rector of Walcot and Canon of Wells. Third and Cheaper Edit-
ion. Crown 8vo. 5^. (Bampton Lectures for 1864,)
^^We lay down these lectures with a sense not only of being edified by
sound teaching and careful thought, but also of being gratified by con-
ciseness and clearness of expression and elegance of style. ^^ — Churchman.
Binney.— SERMONS PREACHED IN THE KING'S
WEIGH HOUSE CHAPEL, 1829—69. By Thomas Binney,
D.D. New and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4?. dd.
^^Full of robust intelligence, of reverent but independent thinking on the
most profound and holy themes^ and of eartiest practical purpose." —
London Quarterly Review.
Bradby.— SERMONS PREACHED AT HAILEYBURY.
By E. H. Bradby, M.A., Master. 8vo. los. 6d.
*^ He who claims a public hearing now, speaks to an audience accustomed
to Cotton, Temple, Vaughan, Bradley, Butler, Farrar, and others
Each has given us good work, several work of rare beauty, force, or
originality ; but we doubt whether any one of them has touched deeper
chords, or brought more freshness and strength into his sermons, than the
last of their number, the present Head Master of Haileybury." — Spectator.
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Tlie object of this work is to expound the great ends to be accomplished by
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FAMILY PRAYERS. Crown 8vo. 5^.
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Butler, Head Master. Crown 8vo. 7^. 6d.
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A SECOND SERIES. Crown 8vb. 7s.6d.
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SERMONS, DOCTRINAL AND PRACTICAL. Edited,
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A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS. Edited by J. A.
Jeremie, D.D., Dean of Lincoln. Seventh Edition. 8vo. 7^.
The North British Review says, *^ Few sermons in our language exhibit
the same rare combination of excellencies ; imagery almost as rich as
Taylor^ s; oratory as vigorous often as South' s; judgment cls sound as
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 5
Butler (Rev. W. Archer.) — continued.
Barrow^ s; a style as attractive but more copious , original^ and forcible
than Atterbur/s; piety as elevated as Howe's, and a fei-vour as intense at
times as Baxter's. Mr. Butler's are the sermons of a t7'uepoet.^^
LETTERS ON ROMANISM, in reply to Dr. Newman's
Essay on Development. Edited by the Dean" of Down. Second
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These Letters contain an exhaustive criticism of Dr. Newman^ s famous
^^ Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.^'' **A work 7vhich
ought to be in the Library of every student of Divinity. " — Bp. St. David's.
LECTURES ON ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. See Scien-
tific Catalogue.
Cambridge Lent Sermons. — SERMONS preached
during Lent, 1864, in Great St. Mary's Church, Cambridge. By
the Bishop of Oxford, Revs. H. P. Liddon, T. L. Claughton,
J. R. Woodford, Dr. Goulburn, J. W. Burgon, T. T.
Carter, Dr. Pusey, Dean Hook, W. J. Butler, Dean Good-
win. Crown Svo. *js. 6d.
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THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT AND ITS
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LIFE. Fourth and Cheaper Edition, crown Svo. 6s.
''^ Among the first theological treatises of this generation." — Guardian.
^^ One of the most remarkable theological books ever writteji." — Times.
CHRIST THE BREAD OF LIFE. An Attempt to give
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Romanism. Second Edition, greatly enlarged. Crown Svo. 45-. 6d.
^^ Deserves the most attentive study by all who interest themselves in the
predominant religious controversy of the day." — Spectator.
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFT OF ETERNAL
LIFE. Compiled by permission of the late J. M'Leod Campbell,
D.D., from Sermons preached chiefly at Row in 1S29 — 31.
Crown Svo. 5^.
** There is a healthy tone as well as a deep pathos not often seen in
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fection of life." — Westminster Review.
REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS, referring to
his Early Ministry in the Parish of Row, 1S25 — 31. Edited with
an Introductory Narrative by his Son, Donald Campbell, M. A.,
Chaplain of King's College, London. Crown Svo. 7^. dd.
These ''Reminiscences and Reflections,^ written during the last year of
his life, were mainly intended to place on record thoughts which might
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
prove helpful to others. *' We recommend this book cordially to all who
are interested in the great cause of religious reformation.^^ — Times.
'* There is a thoroughness and depths as well as a practical earnestness ^
in his grasp of each ti-uth on luhich he dilates, which make his reflections
very valtmble." — Literary Churchman.
Canterbury.— THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Seven Addresses delivered to the
Clergy and Churchwardens of his Diocese, as his Chaise, at his
Primary Visitation, 1872. By Archibald Campbell, Archbishop
of Canterbury. Third Edition. 8vo. cloth, ^s. 6d,
The subjects of these Addresses are, I. Lay Co-operation. II. Cathedral
Reform. III. and IV. Ecclesiastical judicature. V. Ecclesiastical
Legislation. VI. Missionary Work of the Church. VII. The Church
of England in its relation to the Rest of Christendom. There are besides,
a number of statistical and illustrative appendices.
Cheyne.— Works by T. K. Cheyne, M.A., Fellow of Balliol
College, Oxford : —
THE BOOK OF ISAIAH CHRONOLOGICALLY AR-
RANGED. An Amended Version, with Historical and Critical
Introductions and Explanatory Notes. Crown Svo. 7^. dd.
The object of this edition is to restore the probable meaning of Isaiah, so
far as can be expressed in appropriate English. The basis of the version
is the revised translation of 161 1, but alterations ha^ie been introduced
wherever the true sense of the prophecies appeared to require it. The West-
minster Review speaks of it as ** « piece of scholarly work, very carefully
and considerately done." The Academy calls it *' a successful attempt to
extend a right understanding of this important Old Testament writing."*^
NOTES AND CRITICISMS on the HEBREW TEXT
OF ISAIAH. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d,
This work is offered as a slight contribution to a more scientific study of
the Old Testament Scriptures. The author aims at completeness, inde-
pendence, and originality, and constantly endeavours to keep philology
distinct from exegesis, to explain the form witJwut pronouncing on the
matter.
Choice Notes on the Four Gospels, drawn from
Old and New Sources. Crown Svo. 4-f. dd. each Vol. (St.
Matthew and St. Mark in one Vol. price 9^.).
These Notes are selected from the Rev. Prebendary Ford^s Illustrations
of tJu Four Gospels, the choice being chiefly confined to those of a more
simple and practical character.
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Church. — Works by the Very Rev. R. W. CHURCH, M.A.,
Dean of St. Paul's.
SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE the UNIVERSITY
OF OXFORD. By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A., Dean
of St. Paul's. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 4?. dd.
Sermons on the relations between Christianity and the ideas and facts of
modern civilized society. The subjects of the various discourses are: —
^^ The Gifts of Cwilization" *^ Christ^ s Words and Christian Society j^^
** Christ!' s Example,^^ and ^^Civilization and Religion." ^^ Thought) ul
and masterly . . . We regard these sermons as a landmark in religious
thought. They help us to understand the latent strength of a Christianity
that is assailed on all sides." — Spectator.
ON SOME INFLUENCES OF CHRISTIANITY UPON
NATIONAL CHARACTER. Three Lectures delivered in St.
Paul's Cathedral, Feb. 1873. Crown 8vo. 4?. 6d.
^* Few books that %ve have met with have given us keener pleasure than
this It would be a real pleasure to quote extensively, so wise and so
true, so tender and so discriminating are Dean Church'' s judgments, but
the limits of our space are inexorable. We hope the book tvill be bought. "
— Literary Churchman.
THE SACRED POETRY OF EARLY RELIGIONS.
Two Lectures in St. Paul's Cathedral. i8mo. i^. I. The Vedas.
II. The Psalms.
Clay.— THE POWER OF THE KEYS. Sermons preached
in Coventry. By the Rev. W. L. Clay, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6</.
In this work an attempt is made to shew in what sense, and to what
extent, the power of the Keys can be exercised by the layman, the Churchy
and the priest respectively. The Church Review says the sermons are
''''in many respects of unusual merit."
Clergyman's Self- Examination concerning the
APOSTLES' CREED. Extra fcap. 8vo. is. (>d.
Collects of the Church of England. With a beauti-
fully Coloured Floral Design to each Collect, and Illuminated
Cover. Crown 8vo. 12s. Also kept in various styles of morocco.
The distinctive characteristic of this edition is the coloured floral design
which accompanies each Collect, and which is generally emblematical of
the character of the day or saint to which it is assigned; the /lowers
which have been selected are such as are likely to be in bloom on the day to
which the Collect belongs. The Guardian thinks it ''*■ a successful attempt
to associate in a natural atui unforced manner the flowers of our fields
and gardens with the course of the Christian year."
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8 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Cotton. — Works by the late GEORGE Edward Lynch
Cotton, D.D., Bishop of Calcutta : —
SERMONS PREACHED TO ENGLISH CONGREGA-
TIONS IN INDIA. Crown 8vo. 7^. 6^.
** The sermons are models of what sermons should be, not only on eu:-
count of their practical teachings, but also with regard to the singular
felicity with which they are adapted to times, places, and circumstances. "
— Spectator.
EXPOSITORY SERMONS ON THE EPISTLES FOR
THE SUNDAYS OF THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. Two
Vols. Crown Svo. \^s.
These two volumes contain in all fifty-seven Sermons. They were all
preached at various stations throughout India.
Cure.— THE SEVEN WORDS OF CHRIST ON THE
CROSS. Sermons preached at St. George's, Bloomsbury. By
the Rev. E. Capel Cure, M.A. Fcap. Svo. 3^. 6d.
Of these Sermons the^ohn Bull says, " They are earnest and practical ;"
the Nonconformist, ** The Sermons are beautiful, tender, and instruc-
tive;''^ and the Spectator calls them '^A set of really good Sermons."
Curteis.— DISSENT in its RELATION to the CHURCH
OF ENGLAND. Eight Lectures preached before the University
of Oxford, in the year 1871, on the foundation of the late Rev.
John Bampton, M. A. , Canon of Salisbury. By George Herbert
Curteis, M. A., late Fellow and Sub-Rector of Exeter College ;
Principal of the Lichfield Theological College, and Prebendary of
Lichfield Cathedral ; Rector of Turweston, Bucks. Third and
Cheaper Edition, crown 8vo. *js. 6d.
**Mr. Curteis has done good service by maintaining in an eloquent,
temperate, and practical manner, that discussion among Christians is
really an evil, and that an intelligent basis can be found for at least a
proximate union." — Saturday Review **^ well timed, learned, and
thoughtful book, "
Davies.— Works by the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, M.A.,
Rector of Christ Church, St Marylebone, etc. : —
THE WORK OF CHRIST; or, the World Reconciled to
God. With a Preface on the Atonement Controversy. Fcap.
8vo. ds.
SERMONS on the MANIFESTATION OF THE SON
OF GOD. With a Preface addressed to Laymen on the present
Position of the Clergy of the Church of England ; and an Ap- .
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Davies (Rev. J. Llewelyn) — continued,
pendix on the Testimony of Scripture and the Church as to the
possibility of Pardon in the Future State. Fcap. 8vo. 6j. 6af.
^^ Tkis volume, both in its substance, prefix, and siiffix, represents the
noblest type of theology now preached in the English Church,'''' — Spectator.
BAPTISM, CONFIRMATION, AND THE LORD'S
SUPPER, as Interpreted by their Outward Signs. Three Ex-
pository Addresses for Parochial use. Fcap. 8vo., limp cloth.
\s. 6d.
The tnethod adopted in these addresses is to set forth the natural and
historical meaning of the signs of the two Sacraments and of Confirma-
tion, and thus to arrive at the spiritual realities which they symbolize.
The work touches on all the principal elements of a Christian man^s faith,
THE EPISTLES of ST. PAUL TO THE EPHESIANS,
THE COLOSSIANS, and PHILEMON. With Introductions
and Notes, and an Essay on the Traces of Foreign Elements in
the Theology of these Epistles. 8vo. is, 6d.
MORALITY ACCORDING TO THE SACRAMENT
OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6^.
These discourses were preached before the University of Cambridge.
They form a continuous exposition, and are directed mainly against the
two-fold danger which at present threatens the Church — the tendency, on
the one hand, to regard Morality as independent of Religion, and, on the
other, to ignore the fact that Religion finds its proper sphere and criterion
in the moral life.
THE GOSPEL and. MODERN LIFE. Sermons on some
of the Difficulties of the Present Day, with a Preface on a Recent
Phase of Deism. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6j.
The ** recent phase ofDeism'^ examined in the preface to this volume is
thdt professed by the ^*Fall Mall Gazette" — that in the sphere of Religion
there are one or two ^^ probable suppositions," but nothing more. Amongst
other subjects examined are — " Christ and Modern Knowledge," ^^ hu-
manity and the Trinity," ^'"Nature," ''''Religion," ^^ Comcience,"
^^ Human Corruption," and ^^ Human Holiness,"
WARNINGS AGAINST SUPERSTITION IN FOUR
SERMONS FOR THE DAY. Extra fcap. 8vo. is. 6d
**We have seldom read a wiser little booh. The Sermons are short,
terse, and full of true spiritual wisdom, expressed with a lucidity and a
fnoderation that must give them weight even with those who agree least
with their author. Of the volume as a whole it is hardly possible to
speak with too cordial an appreciation, " — Spectator.
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De Teissier. — Works by G. F. De Teissier, B.D.:—
VILLAGE SERMONS, First Series. Crown 8vo. 9^.
This volume contains ffty-four short Seimons^ embracing many subjects
0/ practical importance to all Chiistians. The Guardian says they are
**a little too scholarlike in style for a country village^ but sound and
practical. "
VILLAGE SERMONS, Second Series. Crown 8vo. af.6^.
" This second volume of Parochial Sermons is given to the public in
the humble hope that it may afford many seasonable thoughts for such as
are Mourners in Zion." There are in all fifty-two Sermons embracing a
wide variety of subjects connected with Chi'istian faith and practice.
Donaldson — THE APOSTOLICAL FATHERS: a Critical
Account of their Genuine Writings and of their Doctrines. By
James Donaldson, LL.D. Crown 8vo. 'js.^d.
This book was published in 1864 as the first volume of a ^Critical
History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from the death of the
Apostles to the Nicene Council.^ The intention was to carry down the
history continuously to tJie time of Eusebius, and this intention has not
been abandoned. But as t/ie writers can be sometimes grouped more easily
cucording to subject or locality than according to time, it is deemed ad-
visable to publish the history of each group separately. The Introduction
to the present volume serves as an introduction to the whole period.
Ecce Homo. A Survey of the Life and Work of
Jesus Christ. Eleventh Edition. Crown 8vo. 6^.
**^ very original and remarkable book, full of striking thought and
delicate perception ; a book which has realised with wonderful vigour and
freshness the historical magnitude of Chrisfs woi'k, and which here and
there gives us readings of the finest kind of the probable motive of His indi-
vidual words and actions. ^^ — Spectator. *' The best and most established
believer will find it adding some fresh buttresses to his faith." — Literary-
Churchman. ^^If we have not misunderstood him^ we have before us a
writer who has a right to claim deference from those who think deepest
and know most. " — Guardian.
Faber.— SERMONS AT A NEW SCHOOL. By the Rev.
Arthur Faber, M.A., Head Master of Malvern College. Cr.
8vo. ds.
'* These are high-toned, earnest Sermons, orthodox and scholarlike, and
laden with encouragement and warning, wisely adapted to the needs of
school-life." — Literary Churchman. ^'^^ Admirably realizing that com-
bination of fresh vigorous thought and simple expression of wise parental
counsel, with brotherly sympathy and respect, which are essential to the
success of such sermons, and to which so few attain." — British Quarterly
Review.
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Farrar.— Works by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, M.A., F.R.S.,
Head Master of Marlborough College, and Hon. Chaplain to the
Queen : —
THE FALL OF MAN, AND OTHER SERMONS.
Second and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4?. dd.
This volume contains twenty Sermons, No attempt is made in these
Sermons to develope a system of doctrine. In each discourse some one
aspect of truth is taken up, the chief object being to point out its bearings on
practical religious life. The Nonconformist says of these Sermons, —
^^ Mr. Farrcir's Sermons are almost perfect specimens of one type of Ser-
mons, which we may concisely call beautiful. The style of expression is
beautiful — there is beauty in the thoughts, the illustrations, the allusions —
they are expi'essive of genuinely beautiful perceptions and feelings. ^^ The
British Quarterly jfiEjj'j, — ^^ Ability, eloquence, scholarship, and practical
usefulness, are in these Sermons combined in a very unusual degree. "
THE WITNESS OF HISTORY TO CHRIST. Being
the Hulsean Lectures for 1870. New Edition. Crown Svo. 5^.
The folloajuing are the subjects of the Five Lectures : — /. ** The Ante-
cedent Credibility of the Miraculous." II. " The Adequacy of the Gospel
Records." III. ^^ The Victories of Christianity." IV. ^^Christianity and
the Individual." V. ^^Christianity and the Race." The subjects of the
four Appendices are: — A. " The Diversity of Christian Eviderues."
B. ''Confucius." C. ''Buddha." D. " Comte."
SEEKERS AFTER GOD. The Lives of Seneca, Epictetus,
and Marcus Aurelius. See Sunday Library at end of Catalogue,
THE SILENCE AND VOICES OF GOD: University
and other Sermons. Crown Svo. 6s.
"We can most cordially recommend Dr. Farrar' s singularly beautiful
volume of Sermons For beauty of diction, felicity of style, aptness of
illustration and earnest living exhortation, the volume is without its
parallel. " — ^John Bull. ** They are marked by great ability, by an honesty
which does not hesitate to cuknowledge difficulties and by an earnestness
which commands respect." — Pall Mall Gazette.
Fellowship : Letters Addressed to my Sister
Mourners. Fcap. Svo. cloth gilt. 3^. 6d.
' 'A beautiful little volume, written with genuine feeling, good taste, and
a right appreciation of the teaching of Scripture relative to sorrow and
suffering." — Nonconformist. "A very touching, and at the same time a
very sensible book. It breathes throughout the truest Christian spirit." —
Contemporary Review.
Forbes.— THE VOICE OF GOD IN THE PSALMS.
By Granville Forbes, Rector of Broughton. Cr. Svo. 6s. 6d.
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12 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Gifford.— THE GLORY OF GOD IN MAN. By E. H.
GiFFORD, D.D. Fcap. 8vo., cloth. y,6d.
Golden Treasury Psalter. See^, 27.
Hardwick. — Works by the Ven. Archdeacon Hardwick :
CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS. A Historical Inquiry
into some of the Chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christ-
ianity and the Religious Systems of the Ancient World. New-
Edition, revised, and a Prefatory Memoir by the Rev. Francis
Procter, M.A. Two vols, crown 8vo. i$s.
After several introductory chapters dealing with the religious tendencies
of the present age, the unity of the human race, and the charcuteristics of
Religion under the Old Testament, the Author proceeds to consider the
Religions of India, China, America, Oceanica, Egypt, and Medo-Pei-sia.
The history and characteristics of these Religions are examined, and an
effort is made to bring out the points of difference and affinity between them
arui Christianity. The object is to establish the perfect adaptation of the
latter faith to human nature in all its phases and at all times. " The
plan of the work is boldly and almost nobly conceived. .... We commend
the work to the perusal of all those tuho take interest in the study of ancient
mythology, without losing thei'*' reverence for the supreme authority of the
orcules of the living God." — Christian Observer.
A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Middle
Age. From Gregory the Great to the Excommunication of Luther,
Edited by William Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modem
History in the University of Oxford. With Four Maps constructed
for this work by A. Keith Johnston. Third Edition. Crown
8vo. lOi". 6d.
For this edition Professor Stubbs has carefully revised both text and
notes, making such corrections of facts, dates, and the like as the results of
recent research warrant. The doctrinal, historical, and generally specula-
tive views of the late author have been preserved intact. *As a Manual
for the student of ecclesiastical history in the Middle Ages, we know no Eng-
lish work which can be compared to Mr. Hardwick' s book. " — Guardian.
A HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING
THE REFORMATION. New Edition, revised by Professor
Stubbs. Crown 8vo. los. 6d,
This volume is intended as a sequel and companion to the ^^ History
of the Christian Church during the Middle Age. " The author's earnest
wish has been to give the reader a trustworthy version of those stirring
incidents ivhich mark the Reformation period, ivithout relinquishing his
former claim to characterise peculiar systems, persons, and events according
to the shades and colours they assume, when contemplated from an English
point of view, and by a member of the Church of England,
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 13
Hervey.— THE GENEALOGIES OF OUR LORD AND
SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, as contained in the Gospels of
St. Matthew and St. Luke, reconciled with each other, and shown
to be in harmony with the true Chronology of the Times. By Lord
Arthur Hervey, Bishop of Bath and Wells. 8vo. loj. 6d.
Hymni Ecclesise. — Fcap. 8vo. 7^,6^.
A selection of Ladn Hymns of the MeduevcU Church, containing select-
ions from the Paris Breviary, and the Breviaries of Rome, Salisbury, and
York, The selection is confined to such holy days and seasons as are
recognised by the Church of England, and to special events or things
recorded in Scripture, This collection was edited by Dr. Newmun while
he lived at Oxford,
Kempis, Thos. A. — DE IMITATIONE CHRISTI.
Libri IV. Borders in the Ancient Style, after Holbein, Durer,
and other Old Masters, containing Dances of Death, Acts of
Mercy, Emblems, and a variety of curious ornamentations. In
white cloth, extra gilt. *js. (>d.
The original Latin text has been here faithfully reproduced. The
Spectator says of this edition, it *^ has many solid merits, and is perfect
in its way. " While the Athenaeum says, ** The whole work is admirable;
some of the figure compositions have extraordinary merit."
Kingsley. — Works by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, M.A.,
Rector of Eversley, and Canon of Westminster. (For other Works
by the same author, see Historical and Belles Lettres
Catalogues).
THE WATER OF LIFE, AND OTHER SERMONS.
Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d,
This volume contains twenty-one Sermons preached at various places
— Westminster Abbey, Chapel Royal, before the Queen at Windsor, etc,
VILLAGE SERMONS. Seventh Edition. Fcap.Svo. 3^.6^.
THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH. Second
Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. dd.
This volume consists of eighteen Sermons on passages taken from the
Pentateuch. They are dedicated to Dean Stanley out of gratitude for his
Lectures on the Jewish Church, under the influence and in the spirit of
which they were written.
GOOD NEWS OF GOD. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo.
y.dd.
This volume contains thirty-nine short Sermons, preached in the
ordinary course of the author^ s parochial ministrations.
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14 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Kingsley (Rev. C.) — continued,
SERMONS FOR THE TIMES. Third Edition. Fcap.
8vo. 3^. (id.
Here are twenty-two Sermons, all bearing more or less on the every-day
life of the present day, including such subjects as tliese: — ** Fathers and
Children;" "^ Good Conscience;" **N^ames ;" ** Sponsors hip;" ^^Duty
and Superstition;" ^'•England's Strength;" *^ The Lords Prayer;"
''Shame;" ''Forgiveness;" " The Trw Gentleman ;" "Public Spirit."
TOWN AND COUNTRY SERMONS. Second Edition.
Extra fcap. 8vo. 3J-. (>d.
Some of these Sermons were preached before the Queen, and some in the
performance of the writer's ordinary parochial duty. Of these Sermons
the Nonconformist says^ ' ' They are warm with the fervour of the preacher's
own heart, and strong from the force of his own conznctions. There is
nowhere an attempt at display, and the clearness and simplicity of the
style make them suitable for the youngest or most unintelligent of his
hearers."
SERMONS on NATIONAL SUBJECTS. Second Edition.
Fcap. 8vo. 3J. 6^.
THE KING OF THE EARTH, and other Sermons,
a Second Series of Sermons on National Subjects. Second
Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6</.
The following extract from the Preface to the 2nd Series will explain
the preacher' s aim in these Sermons: — " I have tried. to proclaim the
Lord Jesus Christ, as the Scriptures, both in their strictest letter and in
their general method, from Genesis to Revelation, seem to me to proclaim
Him ; not merely as the Saviour of a few elect souls, but as the light and
life of every human being who enters into the world; as the source of
all reason, strength, and virtue in heathen or in Christian; as the King
and Ruler of the whole universe, and of every nation, family, and man on
earth; as the Redeemer of the whole earth and the whole human race.,.
His death, as a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satis-
faction for the sins of the whole world, by which God is reconciled to the
whole human race. "
DISCIPLINE, AND OTHER SERMONS. Fcp.Svo. zs,6d.
Twenty-four Sermons preached on various occasions, some of them of
a public nature — at the Volunteer Camp, Wimbledon, before the Prince of
Wales at Sandringham, at Wellington College, etc. The Guardian says,
— "There is much thought, tenderness, and devoutness of spirit in these
Sermons, and some of them are models both in matter and expression."
DAVID. Four Sermons : David's Weakness — David's
Strength — David's Anger — David's Deserts. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
These four Sermons were preached before the University of Cambridge,
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 15
Kingsley (Rev. C.) — continued,
and are specially addressed to young men. Their titles are, — ^^Dazdd's
Weakness;" * '' David'' s Strength ;" * ^Davids Anger;'*'' * ^David's Deserts. "
WESTMINSTER SERMONS. 8vo. \os.(yd.
These Sermons were preached at Westminster Abbey or at one of the
Chapels Royal. Their subjects are : — The Mystery of the Cross : The Per-
fect Love : The Spirit of Whitsuntide : Prayer : The Deaf and Dumb :
The Fruits of the Spirit: Confusion : The Shaking of the Heavens and
the Earth: The Kingdom of God: The Law of the Lord: God the
Teacher: The Reasonable Prayer : The One Escape : The Word of God :
I: The Cedars of Lebanon : Life: Death: Signs and Wonders : The
Judgments of God: The War in Heaven: Noble Company : De Pro-
fundis : The Blessing and the Curse : The Silence of Faith : God and
Mammon: The Beatific Vision.
Lightfoot. — Works by J. B. LiGHTFOOT, D.D., Hulsean
Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge j Canon of
St. Paul's.
ST. PAULAS EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. A Re-
vised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Fourth
Edition, revised. 8vo. cloth. \2s.
While the Author's object has been to make this commentary generally
complete, he has paid special attention to everything relating to St, PauVs
personal history and his intercourse with the Apostles and Church of the
Circumcision, as it is this feature in the Epistle to the Galatians which
has given it an overwhelming interest in recent theological controversy.
The Spectator says ** there is no com?nentator at once of sounder judg-
ment and more liberal than Dr. Lightfoot. "
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. A
Revised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Third
Edition. 8vo. 12s.
T/ie plan of this volume is the same as that of ** The Epistle to the
Galatians." ^^No commentary in the English language can be compared
with it in regard to fulness of information, exact scholarship, and
laboured attempts to settle everything about the epistle on a solid founda-
tion. " — Athenaeum.
ST. CLEMENT OF ROME, THE TWO EPISTLES TO
THE CORINTHIANS. A Revised Text, with Introduction
and Notes. 8vo. 8^. 6^.
This volume is the first part of a complete edition of the Apostolic
Fathers. The Introductions deal with the questions of the genuineness and
authenticity of the Epistles, discuss their date and character, and analyse
their contents. An account is also given of all the different epistles which
bear the name of Clement of Rome. ^*' By far the most copiously annotated
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i6 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Lightfoot (Dr. J. B.) — continued,
edition of St, Clement which we yet possess y and the most convenient in
every way for the English reader. " — Guardian.
ON A FRESH REVISION OF THE ENGLISH NEW
TESTAMENT. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6j.
The Author shews in detail the necessity for a fresh revision of the
authorized version on the following grounds: — I. False Readings, 2.
Artificial distinctions created., 3. Real distinctions obliterated. 4. Faults
of Grammar, 5. Faults of Lexicography, 6. Treatment of Proper
Names, official titles, etc, 7. Archaisms, defects in the English, errors
of the press, etc. ** The book is marked by careful scholarship, familiarity
with the subject, sobriety, and circumspection, " — Athenajum.
LrUckock.— THE TABLES OF STONE. A Course of
Sermons preached in All Saints' Church, Cambridge, by H. M.
LucKOCK, M.A., Vicar. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d,
Maclaren — SERMONS PREACHED at MANCHESTER.
By Alexander Maclaren. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d.
These Sermons represent no special school, but deal with the broad prin-
ciples of Christian truth, especially in their bearing on practical, every day
life. A few of the titles are: — " The Stone of Stumbling,^^ *^Love and
Forgiveness," ^^ The Living Dead," ^^ Memory in Another World,"
Faith in Christ," ''Lave and Fear," ''The Choice of Wisdom," ''The
Food of the World."
A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS. Second Edition.
■ Fcap. Svo. 4^. 6d.
T/ie Spectator characterises them as "vigorous in style, full of thought,
rich in illustration, and in an unusual degree interesting. "
A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS. Second Edition.
Fcap. Svo. 4s. 6d.
Sermons more sober and yet more forcible, and with a certain wise and
practical spirituality about them it would not be easy to find." — Spectator.
Maclear. — Works by G. F. Maclear, D.D., Head Master of
King's College School : —
A CLASS-BOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY.
With Four Maps. Eighth Edition. iSmo. 4s. 6d.
" The present volume," says the Preface, "forms a Class- Book of Old
Testament History from the Earliest Times to those of Ezra and Nelie-
miah. In its preparation the most recent authorities have been consulted,
aud wherever it has appeared useful. Notes have been subjoined illustra-
titfe of the Text, and, for the sake of more advanced students, references
added to larger works. The Index has been so ai'ranged as to form a
concise Dictionary of the Persons and Places mentioned in the course oftJu
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 17
Maclear (G. F.) — continued.
Narrative.^'' The Maps, prepared by Stanford, materially add to the
value and usefulness of t/ie book. The British Quarterly Review calls it
**A careful and elaborate, though brief compendium of all that modern
research has done for the illustration of the Old Testatnent. We know of
no work which contains so much important information in so small a
compass. ^^
A CLASS-BOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY.
Including the Connexion of the Old and New Testament. Sixth
Edition. i8mo. 5^. dd.
The present volume forms a sequel to the Author's Class- Book of Old
Testament History, and continues the narrative to the close of St. PauVs
second imprisonment at Rome. The work is divided into three Books —
/. The Connection between the Old and New Testaments. II, The
Gospel, History. III. The Apostolic History. In the Appendix are given
Chronological Tables The Clerical Journal says, ^^ It is not often that
such an anwunt of useful and interesting matter on biblical subjects, is
found in so comvenient and small a compass, as in this well-arranged
volume. "
A CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Third and Cheaper Edition.
i8mo. I J", (id.
The present work is intended as a sequel to the two preceding books.
^^ Like them, it is furnisJied with notes and references to larger works,
and it is hoped that it may be found, especially in the higher form^ of our
Public Schools, to supply a suitable manual of instruction in the 'chief
doctrines of our Church, and a useful help in the preparation of Can-
didates for ConfirmcUion." The Literary Churchman says, ^^ It is indeed
the work of a scholar and divine, and as such, though extremely simple, it
is also extremely instructive. There are few clergy who would not find
it useful in preparing candidates for Confirmation; and there are not a
few who would find it useful to themselves as well, "
A FIRST CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, with Scripture Proofs for
Junior Classes and Schools. New Edition. i8mo. dd.
This is an epitome of the larger Class-book, meant for junior students
and elementary classes. The book has been carefully condensed, so as to .
contain clearly and fully, the most important part of the contents of the
larger book.
A SHILLING-BOOK of OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY,
New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. is.
This Manual bears the same relation to the larger Old Testament Hist-
ory, that the book just mentioned does to the larger work on the Catechism.
It consists of Ten Books, divided into short chapterSy and subdivided inta
2
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1 8 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Maclear (G. F.) — continued,
sections^ each section treating of a single episode in the history^ the title of
which is given in bold type,
A SHILLING-BOOK of NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY.
New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. is.
This dears the same relation to the larger New Testament History that
the work just mentioned has to the large Old Testament History, and is
marked by similar characteristics.
A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION FOR CONFIRMA-
TION AND FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devo-
tions. 32mo. cloth extra, red edges. 2s.
This is an enlarged and improved edition of * The Order of Confirma-
tion.^ To it have been added the Communion Office, with Notes and
Explanations, together with a brief form of Self Examination and De-
votions selected from the works of Cosin, Ken, Wilson^ and others.
Mactnillan. — Works by the Rev. Hugh Macmillan, LL.D.,
F. R. S. E. (For other Works by the same Author, see Catalog u E
OF Travels and Scientific Catalogue).
THE TRUE VINE; or, the Analogies of our Lord's
Allegory. Second Edition. Globe Svo. dr.
This work is not merely an exposition of the fifteenth chapter of St.
yohn^s Gospel, but also a getieral parable of spiritual truth from the world
of plants. It descHbes a few of the points in which the varied realm of
vegetable life comes into contact with the higher spiritual realm, and shews
how rich a field of promise lies before the analogical mind in this direction.
The Nonconformist says, ** // abounds in exquisite bits of description, and
in striking facts clearly stated." The 'British. Quarterly says, ^^ Readers
and preachers who are unscientific will find many of his illustrations as
valuable as they are beautiful. "
BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Eighth Edition.
Globe Svo. ds.
In this volume the author has endeavoured to shew that tlie teaching of
nature and the teaching of the Bible are directed to the same great end;
that the Bible contains the spiritual truths which are necessary to make us
wise unto salvation, and the objects and scenes of nature are the pictures
by which these truths are illustrated. *^ He has made the world more
beautiful to us, and unsealed our ears to voices of praise and messages of
love that might otherwise have been unheard.''^ — British Quarterly Review.
^^ Mr. Macmillan has produced a book which may be fitly described as one
of the happiest efforts for enlisting physical science in the direct service of
religion. " — Guardian.
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 19
Macmillan (H.) — continued.
THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. Second Edition. Globe
8vo. 6j.
In this volume the Author attempts to interpret Nature on her religious ■
side in accordance with the most recent discovei-ies 0/ physical science^ and
to shew how much greater significance is imparted to many passages of
Scripture and many doctnnes of Christianity when looked at in the light
of these discoveries. Instead of regarding Physical Science as antagonistic
to Christianity, the Author believes and seeks to shew that every new dis-
covery tends more strongly to prove that Nature and the Bible have One
Author. " Whether the reader agree or not with his conclusions, he will
acknowledge he is in the presence of an original and thoughtful writer." —
Pall Mall Gazette. ** Thei'e is no class of educated men and women that
will not profit by these essays." — Standard.
M*Cosh. — For Works by James McCosh, LL.D., President
of Princeton College, New Jersey, U.S., see Philosophical
Catalogue.
Maurice. — Works by the late Rev. F. Denison Maurice,
M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cam-
bridge.
Professor Mauricis Works are recognized as having made a deep im-
pression on modern theology. With whatever subject he dealt he tried to
look at it in its bearing on living men and their every -day surroundings^
and faced unshrinkingly the difficulties which occur to ordinary earnest
thinkers in a manner that showed he had intense sympathy with all that
concerns humanity. By all who wish to understand the variotis drifts of
thought during the present century, Mr. Maurices works must be studied.
An intimate friend of Mr. Maurices, one who has carefully studied all
his works, and had besides many opportunities of knowing the Author s
opinions, in speaking of his so-called ^^ obscurity," ascribes it to ^Uhe
never-failing assumption that God is really moving, teaching and acting;
and that the writer's business is not so much to state something for the
reader's benefit, as to appi-ehend what God is saying or doing. The
Spectator says — ^^Feiv of those of our own generation whose names will
live in English history or literature ?iave exerted so profound and so per-
manent an influence as Mr. Maurice."
THE PATRIARCHS AND LAWGIVERS OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT. Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown
8vo. 5^.
The Nineteen Discourses contained in this volume were preached in the
chapel of Lincoln's Inn during the year 1 851. The texts are taken from
the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges,
and Samuel, and involve some of the most interesting biblical topics dis-
cussed in recent times.
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Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF THE OLD TES-
TAMENT. Third Edition, with new Preface. Crown 8vo.
\os. 6d.
Mr. Maurice^ in the spirit which animated the compilers of the Church
Lessons, has in these Sermons regarded the Prophets more as pi'eachers of
rii^hteousTtess than as mere predictors — an aspect of their lives which, he
thinks, has beefi greatly overlooked in our day, and than which, there is
none we have more need to contemplate. He has found that the Old
Testament Prophets, taken in their simple natural sense, clear up many
of the difficulties which beset Us in the daily work o/ life ; make the past
intelligible, the present endurable, and the future real and hopeful.
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
A Series of Lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke. Crown 8vo. 9^.
Mr. Maurice, in his Preface to these Twenty-eight Lectures, says, —
**/« these Lectures I have endeavoured to ascertain what is told us respect-
ing the life of fesus by one of those Evangelists who proclaim Him to be
the Christ, who says that He did coinefrom a Father, that He did baptize
with the Holy Spirit, that He did rise from the dead, I have chosen the
one who is most directly connected with the laier history of the Church,
who was not an Apostle, who professedly wrote for the use of a man
already instructed in the faith of the Apostles. I have followed the course
of the writer's narrative, not changing it under any pretext. I have
adhered to his phraseology, striving to avoid the substitution of any other
for his.''
THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Discourses.
Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6j.
These Discourses, twenty-eight in number, are of a nature similar to
those on the Gospel of St. Luke, and will be found to render valuable
assistance to any one anxious to understand the Gospel of the beloved dis-
ciple, so different in many respects from those of the other three Evangelists.
Appended are eleven notes illustrating various points which occur through-
out the discourses. The Literary Churchman thus speaks of this volume:
— ** Thorough honesty, reverence, and deep thought pervade the work,
which is every way solid and philosophical, as well as theological, and
abouftding with suggestions which the patient student may draw out more
at length for himself.'"
THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Lectures
on Christian Ethics. Second and Cheaper Edition. Cr. Svo. 6j.
These Lectures on Christian Ethics were delivered to the students of the
Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street, London, on a series of
Sunday mornings. Mr. MauiHce believes that the question in which we
are most interested, the question which most affects our studies and our daily
lives, is the question, whether there is a foundation for human morality^
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 21
Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
or whether it is dependent upon the opinions and fashions of different ages
and countries. This impoi'tant question will be found amply and fairly
discussed in this volume, which the National Review calls ^^ Mr.
Maurices m^st effective and instructive work. He is peculiarly fitted
by the constitution of his mind, to throw light on St. John's writings. "
Appended is a note on *'^ Positivism and its TecLcher.^''
EXPOSITORY SERMONS ON THE PRAYER-BOOK.
The Prayer-book considered especially in reference to the Romish
System. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 5^. (id.
After an Introductory Sermon, Mr. Maurice goes over the various parts
of the Church Service, expounds in eighteen Sermons, their intention and
significance, and shews how appropriate they are as expressions of the
deepest longings and wants of all classes of men.
LECTURES ON THE APOCALYPSE, or Book of the
Revelation of St. John the Divine. Crown 8vo. \os. 6d.
Mr. Maurice, instead of trying to find farfetched allusions to great
historical events in the distant future, endeavours to discover the plain,
literal, obvious meaning of the words of the writer, and shews that as
a rule these refer to events contemporaneous with or imjnediately succeeding
the time when the book was written. At the same time he shews the
applicability of the contents of the book to the circumstances of the present
day and of all titnes. ^^ Never," says the Nonconformist, ^* has Mr.
Maurice been more reverent, more careful for the letter of the Scripture,
more discerning of the purpose of the Spirit, or more sober and practical
in his teaching, than in this volume on the Apocalypse. "
WHAT IS REVELATION? A Series of Sermons on the
Epiphany ; to which are added. Letters to a Theological Student
on the Bampton Lectures of Mr. Mansel. Crown 8vo. \os. 6d.
Both Sermons and Letters were called forth by the doctrine maintained
by Mr. Mansel in his Bampton Lectures, that Revelation cannot be a direct
Manifestation of the Infinite Nature of God. Mr. Maurice maintains
the opposite doctrine, and in his Sermons explains why, in spite of the high
atUhorities on the other side, he must still assert the principle which he-
discovers in the Services of the Church and throughout the Bible.
SEQUEL TO THE INQUIRY, "WHAT IS REVELA-
TION?" Letters in Reply to Mr. Mansel's Examination of
"Strictures on the Bampton Lectures." Crown Svo. 6j.
This, as the title indicates, was called forth by Mr. Manser s Examina-
tion of Mr. Maurices Strictures on his doctrine of the Infinite.
THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. Third Edition. Crown Svo.
IOJ-. (}d.
** The book," says Mr. Maurice, ^^ expresses thoughts which have been
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22 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Maurice (F. D.) — continued,
working in my mind for years; the method of it has not been adopted
carelessly; even the composition has undergone frequent revision,^^ There
are seventeen Essays in all, and although meant primarily for UnitarianSy
to quote the words of the Clerical Journal, "// leaves untouched scarcely
any topic which is in agitation in the religious world ; scarcely a moot
point betiveen our various sects ; scarcely a plot of debateable ground be-
tiveen Christians and Infidels, between Romanists and Protestants, between
Socinians and other Christians, betiveen English Churchmen and Dis-
senters on both sides. Scarce is the^e a misgiving, a difficulty, an aspira-
tion stirring amongst us tww, — now, when men seem in earnest as hardly
ever before about religion, and ask and demand satisfaction tvith a fear-
lessness which seems almost awful when one thinks what is at stake — which
is not recognised and grappled with by Mr. Alaurice."
THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE DEDUCED FROM
THE SCRIPTURES. Crown 8vo. 7^. 6d.
Throughout the Nineteen Sermons contaitud in this volume, Mr,
Maurice expounds the ideas which he hcts formed of the Doctrine of
Sacrifice, as it is set forth in various parts of the Bible,
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, AND THEIR
RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. Fourth Edition. Fcap.
8vo. Sj.
These Eight Boyle Lectures are divided into two parts, of four Lectures
each. In the first part Mr. Maurice examines the great Religious systems
which present themselves in the history of the world, with the purpose of
inquiring tvhat is t/ieir main characteristic principle. The second four
Lectures are occupied with a discussion of the questions, ^^In what relation
does Christianity stand to these different faiths ? If there be a faith which
is meant for mankind, is this the one, or must we look for another .^"
ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. Fourth Edition. Fcap.
8vo. 2s, 6d.
In these N'ine Ser?nons the successive petitions of the Lord^s Prayer are
taken up by Mr. Maurice, their significance expounded, and, as was usual
with him, connected with the every-day lives, feelings, and aspirations of
the men of the present time.
ON THE SABBATH DAY ; the Character of the Warrior,
and on the Interpretation of History. Fcap. Svo. 2s. 6d,
THE GROUND AND OBJECT OF HOPE FOR
MANKIND. Four Sermons preached before the University of
Cambridge. Crown Svo. 3J-. 6d.
In these Four Sermons Mr. Maurice views the subject in four aspects :
— /. The Hope of the Missionary. II. The Hope of the Patriot. III.
The Hope of the Church^nan. IV. The Hope of Man, 7)^ Spectator
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 23
Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
says, ^^ It is impossible to find anywhere deeper teaching than this f^ and
the Nonconformist, *^We thank him for the manly, noble, stii-ring words
in these Sermons — xvords fitted to quicken thoughts, to awaken high aspira-
tion, to stimulate to lives of goodness.'''*
THE LORD'S PRAYER, THE CREED, AND THE
COMMANDMENTS. A Manual for Parents and Schoolmasters.
To which is added the Order of the Scriptures. i8mo. cloth
limp. \s.
This book is not written for clergymen, as such, but for parents and
teachers, who are often either prejudiced against the contents of the Cate-
chism, or regard it peculiarly as the clergyman^ s book, but, at the same
time, have a general notion that a habit of prayer ought to be cultivated,
that thej'e are some things which ought to be believed, and some things
which ought to be done. It will be found to be peculiarly valuable at the
present time, when the question of religious education is occupying so much
attention.
THE CLAIMS OF THE BIBLE AND OF SCIENCE.
A Correspondence on some Questions respecting the Pentateuch.
Crown 8vo. 4?. 6d.
This volume consists of a series of Fifteen Letters, the first and last
addressed by a * Layman ' to Mr. Maurice, the intervening thirteen written
by Mr. Maurice himself
DIALOGUES ON FAMILY WORSHIP. Crown 8vo. 6j-.
** The parties in these Dialogues, ^^ says the Preface, **are a Clergyman
who accepts the doctrines of the Church, and a Layman whose faith in
them is nearly gone. The object of the Dialogues is not confutation, but
the discovery of a ground on which two Englishmen and two fathers may
stand, and on which their country and their children may stand when
their places know them no more. "
THE COMMANDMENTS CONSIDERED AS IN-
STRUMENTS OF NATIONAL REFORMATION. Crow^
Svo. 45". 6d.
The author endeavours to shew that the Commatidments are now, and
ever have been, the great protestei's against Presbyteral and Prelatical
assumptions, and that if we do not receive them as Commandments of the
Lord God spoken to Israel, and spoken to every people undei' heaven now,
we lose the greatest witnesses we possess for national morality and civil
freedom.
MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY. Vol.
I. Ancient Philosophy from the First to the Thirteenth Centuries.
Vol. II. Fourteenth Century and the French Revolution, with a
Glimpse into the Nineteenth Century. Two Vols. Svo. 25^.
This is an edition in two volumes of Professor Maurice's History of
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24 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
Philosophy from the earliest period to the present time. It %vas formerly
issued in a number of separate volumes^ and it is believed that all admirers
of the author and all students of philosophy will welcome this compact
edition. In a long introduction to this edition^ in the form of a dialogue.
Professor Maurice justifies his own views, and touches upon some of the
most important topics of the time.
SOCIAL MORALITY. Twenty-one Lectures delivered in
the University of Cambridge. New and Cheaper Edition. Cr.
8vo. I or. 6^.
^^ Whilst reading it we are charmed by the freedom from exclusiveness
and prejudice, the large charity, the loftiness of thought, the eagerness to
recognise and appreciate whatever there is of real worth extant in the
world, which animates it from one end to the other. We gain ne7v
thoughts and new ways of viewing things, even more, perhaps, from being
brought for a time under the influence of so noble and spiritual a mind. "
— Athenaeum.
THE CONSCIENCE: Lectures on Casuistry, delivered in
the University of Cambridge. Second and Cheaper Edition.
Crown 8vo. 5 J.
In this sej-ics of nine Lectures^ Professor Maurice, endeavours to settle
what is meant by the word *' Conscience,^^ and discusses the most important
questions immediately connected with the subject. Taking ^^ Casuistry*''
in its old sense as being the '"''study of cases of Conscience,*^ he endeavours
to show in what way it may be bi'ought to bear at the present day upon
the cuts and thoughts of our ordinary existence. He shows that Con-
science asks for laws, not rules ; for freedom, not chains ; for education,
not suppression. He has abstained from the use of philosophical terms,
and has touched on philosophical systems only when he fancied ''^ they
were interfering with the rights and duties of wayfarers.** The Saturday
Review says: ** We rise from the perusal of these lectures with a detesta-
tion of all that is selfish and mean, and with a living impression that there
is such a thing as goodness after all.**
LECTURES ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
OF THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES. 8vo. los.^.
In the first chapter on '"'•The Jnoish Calling,** besides expounding his
idea of the true nature of a ^^ Church,** the author gives a brief sketch of
the position and economy of the yews ; while in the second he points out
their relatwn to *^the other Nations.** Chapter Third contains a succint
cucount of the various yewish Sects, while in Chapter Fourth are briefly
set forth Mr. Maurice* s ideas of the character of Christ and the nature of
His mission, and a sketch of events is given up to the Day of Pentecost.
The remaining Chapters, extending from the Apostles* personal Ministry
to the end of the Second Century, contain sketches of the character and
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 25
Maurice (F. D.) — continued.
work of all the prominent men in any way connected with the Early
Church, accounts of the origin and nature of the various doctrines ortho-
dox and heretical which had their birth during the period, as well as of
the planting and early history of the Chief Churches in Asia, Africa and
Europe.
LEARNING AND WORKING. Six Lectures delivered
in Willis's Rooms, London, in June and July, 1854, — THE
RELIGION OF ROME, and its Influence on Modem Civilisa-
tion. Four Lectures delivered in the Philosophical Institution of
Edinburgh, in December, 1854. Crown 8vo. 5^.
SERMONS PREACHED IN COUNTRY CHURCHES.
Crown 8vo. \os. 6d.
^^ Earnest, practical, and extremely simple." — Literary Churchman.
*"* Good specimens of his simple and earnest eloquence. The Gospel inci-
dents are realized with a vividness which we can well believe made the
common people hear him gladly. Moreover they are sermons which must
have done the hearers good." — ^John Bull.
Moorhouse. — Works by James Moorhouse, M.A., Vicar
of Paddington : —
SOME MODERN DIFFICULTIES RESPECTING the
FACTS OF NATURE AND REVELATION. Fcap. 8vo.
2s. 6d.
The first of these Four Discourses is a systematic reply to the Essay of
the Rev. Baden Powell on Christian Evidences in ^^ Essays and, Reviews."
The fourth Sermon, on ** The Resurrection," is in some measure com-
plementary to this, and the two together are intended to furnish a tolerably
complete view of modern objections to Revelation. In the second and third .
Sermons, on the " 7'emptation" and '"'' Passion," the author has en-
deavoured ^Uo exhibit the power and wonder of those great facts within
the spiritual sphei'e, which modern theorists have especially sought to dis-
credit."
JACOB. Three Sermons preached before the University of
Cambridge in Lent 1870. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3^. dd.
THE HULSEAN LECTURES FOR 1865. Cr. 8vo. ^s.
*^Eew more valuable works have come into our hands for many years. . .
a m^st fruitful and welcome volume. " — Church Review.
O'Brien.— AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN and ESTAB-
LISH THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION by FAITH
ONLY. By James Thomas O'Brien, D.D., Bishop of Ossory.
Third Edition. 8vo. \2s.
This work consists of Ten Sermons. The first four treat of the nature
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26 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
and mutual relations of Faith and Justification ; the fifth and sixth
examine the corruptions of the doctrine of Justification by Faith only, and
the objections ivhich have been urged against it. The four concluding ser-
mons deal with the moral effects of Faith. Various Notes are culded
explanatory of the Author's reasoning,
Palgrave.— HYMNS. By Francis Turner Palgrave.
Third Edition, enlarged. i8mo. is. 6d.
This is a collection of twenty original Hymns, which the Literary
Churchman speaks of as **so choice, so perfect, and so refined, — so tender
infecting, and so scholarly in expression.''^
Paul of Tarsus. An Inquiry into the Times and the
Gospel of the Apostle of the Gentiles. By a Graduate. 8vo.
lo^. dd.
The Author of this work has attempted, out of the materials which
were at his disposal, to construct for himself a sketch of the time in which
St. Paul lived, of the religious systems with which he was brought in
contact, of the doctrine which he taught, and of the work which he ulti-
mately achieved. " Turn where we will throughout the volume, we find
the best fruit of patient inquiry, sound scholarship, logical argument, and
fairness of conclusion. No thoughtful reader will rise from its perusal
without a real and lasting profit to himself, and a sense of permanent
addition to the cause of truth." — Standard.
Picton.— THE MYSTERY OF MATTER; and other
Essays. By J. Allanson Picton, Author of "New Theories
and the Old Faith." Crown 8vo. los. 6d.
Contents — The Mystery of Matter : The Philosophy of Ignorance : The
Antithesis of Faith and Sight: The Essential Nature of Religion:
. Christian Pantheism.
Prescott — THE THREEFOLD CORD. Sermons preached
before the University of Cambridge. By J. E. Prescott, B.D.
Fcap. Svo. 3J. dd.
Procter.— A HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON
PRAYER: With a Rationale of its Offices. By Francis
Procter, M. A. Eleventh Edition, revised and enlarged. Crown
Svo. \os. 6d.
The Athenaeum says : — ** The origin of every part of the Prayer-book
has been diligently investigated, — and there are few questions or facts con-
nected with it which are not either sufiiciently explained, or so referred to^
that persons interested may work out the truth for themselves."
Procter and Maclean— AN ELEMENTARY INTRO-
DUCTION TO THE -BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.
Re-arranged and Supplemented by an Explanation of the Morning
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 27
and Evening Prayer and the Litany. By F. Procter, M. A. and
G. F. Maclear, D.D. New Edition. i8mo. 2s.(id.
This book has the same object and follows the same plan as the Manuals
already noticed under Mr, Maclear' s name. Each book is subdivided
into chapters and sections. In Book I. is given a detailed History of the
Book of Common Prayer down to the Attempted Revision in the Reign of
Willia7n HI. Book II., consisting of four Farts , treats in order the
various parts of the Prayer Book. Notes, etymological, historical, and
critical, are given throughout the book, while the Appendix contains several
articles of much interest and importance. Appended is a General Index
arid an Index of Words explained in the Notes. The Literary Church-
man characterizes it as *' by far the completest and most satisfactory book
of its kind we know. We wish it were in the hands of every schoolboy
and every schoolmaster in the kingdom. "
Psalms of David CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED.
An Amended Version, with Historical Introductions and Ex-
planatory Notes. By Four Friends. Second and Cheaper
Edition, much enlarged. Crown 8vo. Sj. 6d.
One of the chief designs of the Editors, in preparing this volume, was
to restore the Psalter as far as possible to the order in which the Psalms
7vere written. They give the division of each Psalm into strophes, and
of each strophe into the lines which composed it, and amend the errors of
translation. The Spectator calls it *^One of the most instructive and
valuable books that have been published for many years. "
Golden Treasury Psalter. — The Student's Edition.
Being an Edition with briefer Notes of the above. i8mo. 3^'. dd.
This volume will be found to meet the requirements of those who wish
for a smaller edition of the larger work, at a lower price for family use,
and for the use of younger pupils in Public Schools. The short notes
which are appended to the volume will, it is hoped, suffice to make the
meaning intelligible throughout. The aim of this edition is simply to put
the reader as far as possible in possession of the plain meaning of the
writer. ^^ It is a gem," the Nonconformist says.
Ramsay.— THE CATECHISER'S MANUAL; or, the
Church Catechism Illustrated and Explained, for the Use of
Clergymen, Schoolmasters, and Teachers. By Arthur Ramsay,
M.A. Second Edition. i8mo. i^. 6d.
Rays of Sunlight for Dark Days. A Book of Selec-
tions for the Suflfering. With a Preface by C. J. Vaughan, D.D.
i8mo. New Edition. 3^. 6d. Also in morocco, old style.
Dr. Vaughan says in the Preface, after speaking of the general run of
Books of Comfort for Mourners, ** It is because I think that the little
volume now offered to the Christian sufferer is one of greater wisdom and
of deeper experience, that I have readily consented to the request that I
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28 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
•would introduce it by a fnv xvords of Prefaced The book consists of a
series of very brief extracts from a great variety of authors^ in prose and
poetry^ suited to the many moods of a mourning or suffering mind.
^''Mostly gems of the first water. " — Clerical Journal.
Reynolds.— NOTES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. A
Selection of Sermons by Henry Robert Reynolds, B.A.,
President of Cheshunt College, and Fellow of University College,
London. Crown 8vo. ^s. 6d.
Tki^ ivork may be taken as represe^itative of the mode of thought and
feeling which is most popular amongst the freer and more cultrvated Non-
conformists. ^*It is long,'^ says the Nonconformist, ^* since we have
met with any published sermons better calculated than these to stimulate
devout thought y and to bring home to the soul the reality, of a spiritual life.^^
Roberts.— DISCUSSIONS ON THE GOSPELS. By the
Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D. Second Edition, revised and
enlarged. 8vo. i6s.
This volume is divided into two parts. Part I. ^^On the Language
employed by our Lord and His Disciples, " in 7uhich the author endeavours
to prove that Greek was the language usually employed by Christ Himself
in opposition to the common belief that Our Lord spoke Aramcean. Part
II. is occupied with a discussion '"''On the Original Language of St.
Matthew's Gospel ^^^ and on '"''The Origin and Authenticity of the Gos-
pels. " " The author brings the valuable qualifications of learning, temper,
and an independent judgment.''^ — Daily News.
Robertson.— PASTORAL COUNSELS. Being Chapters
on Practical and Devotional Subjects. By the late John Robert-
son, D.D. Third Edition, with a Preface by the Author of
" The Recreations of a Country Parson," Extra fcap. 8vo. 6j.
These Sermons are the free utterances of a strong and independent
thinker. He does not depart from the essential doctrines of his Church,
but he expounds them in a spirit of the widest charity, and always having
most prom inently in view the requirements of practical life. * * The sermons
are admirable specimens of a practical, earnest, and instructive style of
pulpit teaching. " — Nonconformist.
RowseU.— MAN'S LABOUR AND GOD'S HARVEST.
Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in Lent,
1 86 1. Fcap. 8vo. 3^.
^^We strongly recommend this little volume to young men, and especially
to those who are contemplating working for Chi'ist in Holy Orders." —
Literary Churchman.
Salmon.— THE REIGN OF LAW, and other Sermons^
preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin. By the Rev.
George Salmon, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the
University of Dublin. Crown 8vo. 6s.
*^Well considered, learned, and powerful discourses." — Spectator.
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 29
Sanday.— THE AUTHORSHIP AND HISTORICAL
CHARACTER OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL, considered in
reference to the Contents of the Gospel itself. A Critical Essay.
By William Sanday, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.
Crown 8vo. 8j. dd.
The object of this Essay is critical and nothing more. The Author
attempts to apply faithfully and persistently to the contents of the much
disputed fourth Gospel that scientific method which has been so successful
in other directions. ** The facts of religion ^''^ the Author believes^ "(i. e.
the documents^ the history of religious bodies, dr^c. ) are as much facts as
the lie of a coal-bed or the formation of a coral-reef^'' ** The Essay is
not only most valuable in itself but full of promise for the future.''^ —
Canon Westcott in the Academy.
Selborne.— THE BOOK OF PRAISE : From the Best
English Hymn Writers. Selected and arranged by Lord Selborne.
With Vignette by Woolner. i8mo. 4^. dd.
The present is an attempt to present, under a convenient arrangement, a
collection of su^h examples of a copious and interesting branch of popular
literature, as, after several years^ study of the subject, have seemed to the
Editor most worthy of being separated J'rom the mass to ivhich th!ey belong.
It has been the Editor^ s desire and aim to adhere strictly, in all cases in
which it could be ascertained, to the genuine uncorrupted text of the authors
themselves. The names of the authors and date of composition of the
hymns, when known, are affixed, while notes are added to the volume,
giving further details. The Hymns are arranged according to subjects.
" There is not room for two opinions as to the value of the ^Book of Praise. ' "
— Guardian. ''^Approaches as nearly as one can conceive to perfection^
— Nonconformist
BOOK OF PRAISE HYMNAL. See end of this Catalogue.
Sergeant.— SERMONS. By the Rev. E. W. Sergeant,
M.A., Balliol College, Oxford; Assistant Master at Westminster
College. Fcap. 8vo. 2j. dd.
Smith.— PROPHECY A PREPARATION FOR CHRIST.
Eight Lectures preached before the University of Oxford, being the
Bampton Lectures for 1869. By R. Payne Smith, D.D., Dean
of Canterbury. Second and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6/.
The atUhor's object in these Lectures is to sheiv that there exists in the
Old Testament an element, which no criticism on naturalistic principles
can either account for or explain away: that element is Prophecy. The
author endeavours to prove that its force does not consist merely in its
predictions. *^ These Lectures overflow with solid learning. "-r-Record.
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30 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Smith. — CHRISTIAN FAITH. Sermons preached before
the University of Cambridge. By W. Saumarez Smith, M. A.,
Principal of St. Aidan's College, Birkenhead. Fcap. 8vo. 3^-. 6d.
** Appropriate and earnest sermons ^ suited to the practical exhortation of
an educated congregation. " — Guardian.
Stanley. — Works by the Very Rev. A. P. Stanley, D.D.,
Dean of Westminster.
THE ATHANASIAN CREED, with a Preface on the
General Recommendations of the Ritual Commission. Cr.
8vo. 2S.
The object of the work is not so much to urge the omission or change of
the Athanasian Creed, as to shew that such a relaxation ought to give
offence to no reasonable or religious mind. IVith this view, the Dean of
Westminster discusses in succession — (i) the Authorship of the Creed,
{2) its Internal Characteristics, (3) the Peculiarities of its Use in the
Church of England, (4) its Advantages and Disadvantages, (5) Us
various Interpretations, and (6) the Judgment passed upon it by the Ritual
Commission. In conclusion. Dr. Stanley maintains that the use of the
Athanasian Creed should no longer be made compulsory. ^^Dr. Stanley
puts with admirable force the objections which may be made to the Creed ;
equally admirable, we think, in his statement of its advantages. " — Spectator.
THE NATIONAL THANKSGIVING. Sermons preached
in Westminster Abbey. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.
These Sermons are (l) *^ Death and Life," preached December 10,
1871 ; (2) " The Trumpet of Patmos,'' December 17, 1871 ; (3) " The
Day of Thanksgiving,^^ March 3, 1872. **/« point of fervour and
polish by far the best specimens in print of Dean Stanley* s eloquent style."*^ —
Standard.
Sunday Library. See end of this Catalogue.
Swainson. — Works by C. A. Swainson, D.D., Canon of
Chichester : —
THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH IN THEIR RE-
LATIONS TO HOLY SCRIPTURE and the CONSCIENCE
OF THE CHRISTIAN. 8vo. cloth. 9^.
The Lectures which compose this volume discuss, amongst others, the
following subjects : ^^ Faith in God," '■^ Exercise of our Reason," ^^ Origin
and Authority of Creeds," and * * Private judgment, its use and exercise. "
*• Treating of abstruse points of Scripture, he applies them so forcibly to
Christian duty and practice as to prove e?ninently serviceable to the
Church."— ]ohn BulL
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 31
Swain son (C. A.) — continued,
THE AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT,
and other LECTURES, delivered before the University of Cam-
bridge. 8vo. cloth. 1 2 J.
The first series of Lectures in this work is on " The Words spoken by
the Apostles of ^esus," " The Inspiration of God^s Servants " " The
Human Character of the Inspired Writers j'^ and '* The Divine Character
of the Word written.''^ The second embraces Lectures on ''^ Sin as Im-
perfection" *^ Sin as Self will" ^^ Whatsoever is not of Faith is Sin,"
* ' Christ the Saviour, " and * * The Blood of the New Covenant. " The
third is on '■^Christians One Body in Christ" " The One Body the Spouse
of Christ " ^* Chrisfs Prayer for Unity," *"* Our Reconciliation should be
manifested in common Worship," and ^^ Ambassadors for Christ."
Taylor.— THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. New and
Revised Edition. By Isaac Taylor, Esq. Crown 8vo. 8^. 6d.
The earlier chapters are occupied with an examination of the primitive
history of the Christian Religion, and its relation to the Roman govei'n-
ment; and here, as well as in the remainder of the work, the author shenvs
the bearing of that history on some of the difficult and interesting questions
which have recently been clai?ning the attention of all earnest men. The
last chapter of this New Edition treats of *' The Present Position of the
Argument concerning Christianity," with special 'reference to M, Renan^s
Vie de Jesus.
Temple.— SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL
of RUGBY SCHOOL. By F. Temple, D.D., Bishop of Exeter.
New and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4J". 6d.
This volume contains Thirty -five Sermons on topics more or less inti-
mately connected with every -day life. The following are a few of the
subjects discoursed upon: — *^Love and Duty:" ^^Cominq- to Christ;"
''Great Men;" ''Faith;" "Doubts;" "Scruples;" "Original Sin;"
"Friendship;" "Helping Others;" "The Discipline of Temptation;"
"Strength a Duty;" " Worldliness ;" "III Temper;" "The Burial of
tJie Past."
A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN
THE CHAPEL OF RUGBY SCHOOL. Second Edition.
Extra fcap. 8vo. dr.
This Second Series of Forty-two brief, pointed, practical Sermons, on
topics intimately connected with the every-day life of young and old, will be
acceptable to all who are acquainted with the First Series. The following
are a few of the subjects treated of: — "Disobedience," "Almsgiving,"
"The Unknown Guidance of God," " Apathy one of our Trials," "High
Aims in Leaders," "Doing our Best," " The Use of Knowledge," "Use
of Observances," "Martha and Mary," "John the Baptist," "Severity
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32 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Temple (F., D.D.) — continued,
before Mercy, ^^ ^^Even Mistakes Punished,^^ *^ Morality and Religion^''^
''ChUdren;' ''Action the Test oj Spiritual Life,'' ''Self Respect,'' "Too
Late," " The Tercentenary."
A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN
RUGBY SCHOOL CHAPEL IN 1867— 1869. Extra fcap.
Svo. 6j.
This third series of Bishop Temple's Rugby Sermons, contains thirty-six
brief discourses, including the " Good-bye^' sermon preached on his leaving
Rugby to enter on t/ie office he now holds.
Thring. — Works by Rev. Edward Thring, M.A.
SERMONS DELIVERED AT UPPINGHAM SCHOOL.
Crown Svb. 5^.
In this volume are contained Forty-seven brief Sermons, all on subjects
more or less intimately connected with Public-school life. ' ' We desire very
highly to commend these capital Sermons which treat of a boy's life and
trials in a thoroughly practical way and with great simplicity and im-
pressiveness. They deserve to be classed with the best of their kind, " —
Literary Churchman.
THOUGHTS ON LIFE-SCIENCE. New Edition, en-
larged and revised. Crown Svo. 7^. 6d.
In this volume are discussed in a familiar manner some of the most
interesting problems between Science and Religion, Reason and Feeling.
Tracts for Priests and People. By Various
Writers.
The First Series. Crown Svo. Sj.
The Second Series. Crown Svo. %s.
The whole Series of Fifteen Tracts may be had separately, price
One Shilling each.
Trench. — Works by R. Chenevix Trench, D.D., Arch-
bishop of Dublin. (For other Works by the same author, see
Biographical, Belles Lettres, and Linguistic Cata-
logues).
NOTES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD.
Twelfth Edition. Svo. \2s.
This work has taken its place as a standard exposition and interpreta-
tion of Christ* s Parables. The book is prefaced by an Introductory Essay
in four chapters : — /. On the definition of the Parable. II. On Teach-
ing by Parables. III. On the Interpretation of the Parables. IV. On
other Parables besides those in the Scriptures. The author then proceeds
to take up the Parables one by one, and by the aid of philology, history,
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 33
Trench — continued,
antiquities, and the researches of travellers, shews forth the significance,
beauty, and applicability of each, concluding with what he deems its true
moral interpretation. In the numerous Notes are many valuable references,
illustrative quotations, critical and philological annotations, etc., and ap-
pended to the volume is a classified list of fifty-six works on the Parables.
NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD.
Ninth Edition. 8vo. \2s.
In the ^Preliminary Essay'* to this work, all the momentous and in-
teresting questions that have been raised in connection with Miracles, are
discussed unth considerable fulness. The Essay consists of six chapters : —
/. On the Names of Miracles, i. e. the Greek words by which they are
designated in the New Testament. II. The Miracles and Nature — What
is the difference between a Miracle and any event in the ordinary course
of Nature 1 III. The Authority of Miracles — Is the Miracle to command
absolute obedience ? IV. The Evangelical, compared with the other cycles
of Miracles. V. The Assaults on the Miracles — i. The Jewish. 2. The
Heathen (Celsus etc.). 3. The Pantheistic (Spinosa etc.). 4. The
Sceptical (Hume). 5. The Miracles only relatively miraculous (Schleier-
macher). 6. The Rationalistic (Paulus). 7. The Historico- Critical
(Woolston, Strauss). VI. The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles. The
author then treats the separate Miracles as he does the Parables.
SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. New
Edition, enlarged. 8vo. cloth. I2x.
The study of synonyms in any language is valuable as a discipline for
training the mind to close and accurate habits of thought ; more especially
is this the case in Greek — *' a language spoken by a people of the finest and
subtlest intellect ; who saw distinctions where others saw none ; who di-
vided out to different words what others often were content to huddle con-
fusedly under a common term. . . . Where is it so desirable that we should
miss nothing, that we should lose no finer intention of the writer, as in
those words which are the vehicles of the very mind of God Himself ?^^
This Edition has been carefully revised, and a considerable number of new
synonyms added. Appended is an Index to the Synonyms, and an
Index to many other words alluded to or explained throughout the work.
*''He is," the Athenaeum says, '*a guide in this department of knowledge
to whom his readers may intrust themselves with confidence. His sober
judgment and sound sense are barriers against the misleading influence of
arbitrary hypotheses."
ON THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT. Second Edition. 8vo. yj.
After some Introductory Remarks, in which the propriety of a revision
is briefly discussed, the whole question of the merits of the present version
is gone into in detail, in eleven chapters. Appended is a chronological list
3
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34 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Trench — continued,
of 7vorks bearing on the subject^ an Index of the principal Texts con-
sideredy an Index of Greek Words, and an Index of other Words re-
ferred to throughout the book,
STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. Third Edition. 8vo.
loj. dd.
77iis book is published under the conviction that the assertion often
mnde is untrue, — viz. that the Gospels are in the main plain and easy,
and t/iat all the chief difficulties of the New Testament are to be found
in the Epistles, These ^* Studies, sixteen in number, are the fruit of a
much larger scheme, and each Study deals imth some important episode
mentioned in the Gospels, in a critical, philosophical, and practical man-
ner. Many references and quotations are added to the Notes. Among
the subjects treated are: — The Temptation; Christ and the Samaritan
Wonmn; The Three Aspirants; The Transfiguration; Zacchceus; The
True Vine; Tlu Penitent Malefactor; Christ and the Two Disciples on
the way to Emmaus,
COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES to the SEVEN
CHURCHES IN ASIA. Third Edition, revised. 8vo. %s. 6d.
The present work consists of an Introduction, being a commentary on
Rev. i. 4 — 20, a detailed examination oj each of the Seven Epistles, in all
its bearings, and an Excursus on the Historico- Prophetical Interpreta-
tion of the Epistles.
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. An Exposition
drawn from the writing of St. Augustine, with an Essay on his
merits as an Interpreter of Holy Scripture. Third Edition, en-
larged. 8vo. loj. 6d.
The first half of the present work consists of a dissertation in eight
chapters on ''''Augustine as an Interpreter of Scripture,^^ the titles of the
several chapters being as follow : — /. Augustin^s General Views of Scrip>-
ture and its Interpretation. II. The External Helps for the Interpreta-
tion of Scripture possessed by Augustine. III. Augustine^ s Principles
and Canons of Interpretation. IV. Augustini s Allegorical Interpretation
of Scripture. V. Illustrations of Augustine^ s Skill as an Inierprder of
Scripture. VI. Augustine on John the Baptist and on St. Stephen.
VII. Augustine on the Epistle to the Romans, VIII. Miscellaneous
Examples of Augustinis Interpretation of Scripture. The latter half of
the work consists of Augustine's Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount,
not ho^vever a mere series of quotations from Augustine, but a connected
account of his sentiments on the various passages of thai Sermon, inter-
spersed with criticisms by Archbishop Trench.
SERMONS PREACHED in WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Second Edition. 8vo. los. 6d.
These Sermons embrace a wide variety of topics, and are thoroughly
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 35
Trench — continued.
practical^ earnest^ and evangelical, and simple in style. The following
are a few of the subjects: — ^^Tercentenary Celebration of Queen Eliza-
beth's Accession '^^ ^* Conviction and Conversion f ** The Incredulity of
Thomas;" ''The Angels' Hymn;'* ''Counting the Cost;" "The Holy
Trinity in Relation to our Prayers;" "On the Death of General Have-
lock;" "Christ Weeping over Jerusalem;" "Walking with Christ in
White."
SHIPWRECKS OF FAITH. Three Sermons preached
before the University of Cambridge in May, 1867. Fcap. 8vo.
2s. 6d.
These Sermons are especially addressed to young men. The subjects
are "Balaam" "Saul," and "Judas Iscariot" These lives are set
forth as beacon-lights, ' ' to warn us off from perilous reefs and quick-
sands, which have been the destruction of many, and tvhich might only too
easily be ours." 7"/^^ John Bull says, "they are, like all he zurites, af-
fectionate and earnest discourses. "
SERMONS Preached for the most part in Ireland. Svo.
lOf. 6d.
This volume consists of Thirty-two Sermons, the greater part of which
were preached in Ireland ; the subjects are as follows : — Jacob, a Prince
with God and with Men — Agrippa — The Woman that was a Sinner —
Secret Faults — The Seven Worse Spirits — Freedom in the Truth — Joseph
a?td his Brethren — Bearing one another* s Burdens — Christ's Challenge to
the World — The Love of Money — The Salt of the Earth — The Armour of
God — Light in the Lord — The Jailer of Philippi— The Thorn in the Flesh
— Isaiah's Vision — Selfishness — Abraham interceding for Sodom — Vain
Thoughts — Pontius Pilate— The Brazen Serpent — The Death and Burial
of Moses — A Word frofu the Cross — The Church's Worship in the
Beauty of Holiness — Every Good Gift from Above — On the Hearing of
Prayer — The Kingdom which cometh not with Observation — Pressing
towards the Mark — Saul — The Good Shepherd — The Valley of Dry Bones
— All Saints.
Tudor.— The DECALOGUE VIEWED as the CHRIST-
IAN'S LAW. With Special Reference to the Questions and
Wants of the Times. By the Rev. Rich. Tudor, B.A. Crown
Svo. \os. 6d.
The author's aim is to bring out the Christian sense of the Decalogue
in its application to existing needs and questions. The work will be found
to occupy ground which no other single work has hitherto filled. It is di-
znded into Two Parts, the First Part consisting of three lectures on
"Duty," and the Second Part of twelve lectures on the Ten Command-
ments. The Guardian says of it, "His volume throughout is an outspoken
and sound exposition of Christian morality, based deeply upon true founda-
tions, set forth systematically, and forcibly and plainly expressed — as good
a specimen of what pulpit lectures ought to be as is often to be found."
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36 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Tulloch.— THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AND
THE CHRIST OF MODERN CRITICISM. Lectures on
M. Renan's *'Vie de Jesus." By John Tulloch, D.D.,
Principal of the College of St. Mary, in the University of St.
Andrew's. Extra fcap. 8vo. 45. 6^.
Vaughan. — Works by Charles J. Vaughan, D.D., Master
of the Temple :—
CHRIST SATISFYING THE INSTINCTS OF HU-
MANITY. Eight Lectures delivered in the Temple Church.
New Edition. Extra fcp. 8vo. y. 6d.
The object 0/ these Sermons is to exhibit the spiritual wants of human
nature^ and to prove that all of them receive full satisfaction in Christ.
The various instincts which He is shewn to meet are those of Truths
Reverence^ Perfection, Liberty, Courage, Sympathy, Sacrifice, and Unity,
^'IVe are convinced that there are congregations, in number unmistakeably
increasing, to whom such Essays as these, full of thought and learnings
are infinitely more benHicial, for they are more acceptable, than the recog-
nised type of sermons,— ]o\m Bull.
MEMORIALS OF HARROW SUNDAYS. A Selection
of Sermons preached in Harrow School Chapel. With a View
of the Chapel. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. lOf. (>d.
* * Discussing, " says the John Bull, * * those forms of evil and impediments
to duty which peculiarly beset the young. Dr. Vaughan has, with singular
tact, blended deep thought and analytical investigation of principles with
interesting earnestness and eloquent simplicity.^ The Nonconformist
says ''^ the volume is a precious one for family reading, and for the hand
of the thoughtful boy or young man entering life.^^
THE BOOK AND THE LIFE, and other Sermons,
preached before the University of Cambridge. New Edition.
Fcap. 8vo. 4J. 6d.
These Sermons are all of a thoroughly practical nature, and some of
them are especially adapted to those who are in a state of anxious doubt.
TWELVE DISCOURSES on SUBJECTS CONNECTED
WITH THE LITURGY and WORSHIP of the CHURCH
OF ENGLAND. Fcap. 8vo. 6^.
Four of these discourses were published in i860, in a work entitled
Revision of the Liturgy ; four others have appeared in the form of separate
sermons, delivered on various occasions, and published at the time by re-
quest ; and four are new. The Appendix contains two articles, — one on
*^^ Subscription and Scruples," the other on the ^''Rubric and the Burial
Service." The Press characterises the volume as ^'eminently wise and
temperate."
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 37
Vaughan (Dr. C. J.) — continued.
LESSONS OF LIFE AND GODLINESS. A Selection
of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Fourth
and Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. (yd.
This volume consists of Nineteen Sermons^ mostly on subjects connected
with the every-day walk and conversation of Christians, They bear such
titles as " The Talebearer," ^* Features of Charity" ** The Danger ofRe-
lapse," ** The Secret Life and the Outward," ^^ Family Prayer" ^^ Zeal
without Consistency" ** The Gospel an Incentive to Industry in Business,"
*^ Use and Abuse of the World." The Spectator styles them ^^ earnest
and human. They are adapted to every cIclss and order in tfie social
system, and will be read with wakeful interest by all who seek to amend
2uhatever may be amiss in their natural disposition or in their acquired "
habits."
WORDS FROM THE GOSPELS. A Second Selection
of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Second
Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4^. (yd.
The Nonconformist characterises these Sermons as * * of practical earnest-
ness, of a thoughtfulness that penetrates the common conditions and ex-
periences of life, and brings the truths and examples of Scripture to bear
on them with singular force, and of a style that owes its real elegance to
the simplicity and directness which have fine culture for their roots.
LESSONS OF THE CROSS AND PASSION. Six
Lectures delivered in Hereford Cathedral during the Week before
Easter, 1869. Fcap. 8vo. 2J. (yd.
The titles of the Sermons are: — /. " Too Lati^ (Matt. xxvi. 45 J. //.
* * The Divine Sacrifice and the Human Priesthood. " III. * *Love not the
World." IV. '' The Moral Glory of Christ." V. ''Christ made perfect
through Suffering." VI. ''Death the Remedy of Chris fs Loneliness."
" This little volume," the Nonconformist says, "exhibits all his best cha-
rcLcteristics. Elevated, calm, and clear, the Sermons owe much to their
force, and yet they seem literally to owe nothing to it. They are studied,
but their grace is the grace of perfect simplicity. "
LIFE'S WORK AND GOD'S DISCIPLINE. Three
Sermons. New Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 2j. (yd.
The Three Sermons are on the following subjects: — /. "The Work
burned and the Workmen saved. " //. * * The Individual Hiring. " ///.
** The Remedial Discipline of Disease and Death."
THE WHOLESOME WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST.
Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in
November 1866. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 3^-. 65.
Dr. Vaughan uses the word "Wholesome" here in its literal and
original sense, the sense in which St. Paul uses it, as meaning healthy,
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38 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Vaughan (Dr. C. 1,)— continued,
sound, conducing to right living ; and in these Sermons he points out
and illustrates several oj the ^^ wholesome'*^ characteristics of the Gospel^
— the Words of Christ. The John Bull says this volume is ** replete with
all the author's well-knaivn vigour of thought and richness of expression.^*
FOES OF FAITH. Sermons preached before the Uni-
versity of Cambridge in November 1868. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d.
The ^^ Foes of Fait h^^ preached against in these Four Sermons are: —
/. ''Unreality:' II. ''Indolence:' III "Irreverence.'' IV. "Incon-
sistency." " They a7e written" the London Review says^ "with ailture
and elegance, and exhibit the thoughtful earnestness, piety, and good sense
of their author."
LECTURES ON THE EPISTLE to the PHILIPPIANS.
Third and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 5^.
Each Lecture is prefaced by a literal translation from the Greek of
the paragraph which forms its subject, contains first a minute explanation
of the passage on which it is based, and then a practical application of
the verse or clause selected as its text.
LECTURES ON THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN.
Third and Cheaper Edition. Two Vols. Extra fcap. 8vo. ^s.
In this Edition of these Lectures, the literal translations of the passages
expounded will be found interwoven in the body of the Lectures themselves.
In attempting to expound this most-hard-to-understand Book, Dr. Vaughan,
white taking from others what assistance he required, has not adhered to
any particular school of interpretation, but has endeavoured to shew forth
the significance of this Revelation by the help of his strong common sense,
critical acumen, scholarship, and reverent spirit. "Dr. Vaughan' s Ser-
mons," the Spectator says, "are the most practical discourses on the
Apocalypse with which we are cu:quainted. " Prefixed is a Synopsis of the
Book of Revelation, and appended is an Index of passages illustrating
the language of the Book.
EPIPHANY, LENT, AND EASTER. A Selection of
Expository Sermons. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. loj. dd.
The first eighteen of these Sermons were pr ecu hed during the seasons of
i860, indicated in the title, and are practical expositions of passages taken
from the lessons of the days on which they were delivered. Each Lecture is
prefaced with a careful and literal rendering of the original of the passage
of which the Lecture is an exposition. The Nonconformist says that
"in simplicity, dignity, close adherence to the words of Scripture, insight
into ' the mind of the Spirit,' and practical thoughtfulness, they are models
of that species of pulpit instruction to which they belong."
THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. For English Readers.
Part I., containing the First Epistle to the Thessalonians.
Second Edition. 8vo. \s. 6d.
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 39
Vaughan (Dr. C. J.) — continued.
It is the object of this work to enable English readers^ unacquainted
with Greeky to enter with intelligence into the meaning, connection, and
phraseology of the writings of the great Apostle,
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. The Greek
Text, with English Notes. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 7^. 6^.
This volume contains the Greek Text of the Epistle to the Romans as
settled by the Rev. B. F. Westcott, D.D., for his complete recension of the
Text of the New Testament. Appended to the text are copious critical and
exegetical Notes, the result of almost eighteen years' study on the part of
the author. The ^^ Index of Words illustrated or explained in the Notes''''
will be found, in some considerable degree, an Index to the Epistles as a
whole. Prefixed to the volume is a discourse on ^'St. Raul's Conversion
and Doctrine," suggested by some recent publications on St. PauVs theo-
logical standing. The Guardian says of the work, — ''^For educated young
men his commentary seems to fill a gap hitherto unfilled. ... As a whole,
Dr. Vaughan appears to us to have given to the world a valuable book of
original and careful and earnest thought bestowed on the cucomplishmefU
of a work which will be of much service and which is much meded. "
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST DAYS.
Series I. The Church of Jerusalem. Third Edition.
" IL The Church of the Gentiles. Second Edition.
" III. The Church of the World. Second Edition.
Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 4J. dd. each.
Where necessary, the Authorized Version has been departed from, and
a new literal translation taken as the basis of exposition. All possible
topographical and historical light has been brought to bear on the subject ;
and while thoroughly practical in their aim, these Lectures uill be found
to afford a fair notion of the history and condition oj the Primitive
Church. The British Quarterly says, — ** These Sermons are worthy of
all praise, and are models of pulpit teaching."
COUNSELS for YOUNG STUDENTS. Three Sermons
preached before the University of Cambridge at the Opening of
the Academical Year 1870-71. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
The titles of the Three Sermons contained in this volume are: — /.
'' The Great Decision." II. '' The House and the Builder ." III. ''The
Prayer and the Counter- Prayer. " They all bear pointedly, earnestly, and
sympathisingly upon the conduct and pursuits of young students and
young men generally.
NOTES FOR LECTURES ON CONFIRMATION,
with suitable Prayers. Eighth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. ij-. (yd.
In preparation for the Confirmation held in Harrow School Chapel,
Dr. Vaughan was in the habit of printing week by iveek, and distributing
among the Candidates, somewhat full notes of the Lecture he purposed to
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40 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS,
Vaughan (Dr. C. I*)— continued,
deliver to thenty together with a form of Prayer adapted to the particular
subject. He has collected these weekly Notes and Prayers into this little
volume^ in the hope that it may assist the labours of those who are engaged
in preparing Candidates for Confirmation^ and wJio find it difficult to lay
their hand upon any one book of suitable instruction,
THE TWO GREAT TEMPTATIONS. The Tempta-
tion of Man, and the Temptation of Christ. Lectures delivered in
the Temple Churchy Lent 1872. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3J. (id.
Vaughan. — Works by David J. Vaughan, M.A., Vicar of
St. Martin's, Leicester : —
SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH,
LEICESTER, during the Years 1855 and 1856. Cr. 8vo. 5^. (>d,
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES AND THE BIBLE. New
Edition, revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 5^. 6^.
^*This little volume" the Spectator saySy ^*is a model of that honest
and reverent criticism of the Bible which is not only right, but the duty of
English clergymen in such times as these to put, forth from the pulpit."
Venn.— ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF
BELIEF, Scientific and Religious. Being the Hulsean Lectures
for 1869. By the Rev. J. Venn, M. A. 8vo. 6^. (yd.
These discourses are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into
some of their consequences, certain characteristics by ivhich the attainment of
religious belief is prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief
upon most other subjects.
Warington.— THE WEEK OF CREATION ; or, THE
COSMOGONY OF GENESIS CONSIDERED IN ITS
RELATION TO MODERN SCIENCE. By George War-
ington, Author of "The Historic Character of the Pentateuch
Vindicated." Crown 8 vo. 4?. 6^/.
The greater part of this work is tg,ken up with the teaching of the
Cosmogony. Its purpose is also investigated, and a ch<}pter is devoted to
the consideration of the passage in which the difficulties occur. ''''A very
able vindication of the Mosaic Cosmogony hy a writer who unites the ad'
vantages of a critical knowledge of the Hebrew ^text and of distinguished
scientific ctttainments." — Spectator.
WestCOtt. — Works by BROOKE Foss WestCOTT, D.D.,
Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge ;
Canon of Peterborough : —
The London Quarterly, speaking of Mr. Westcott, says, — ** To a learn-
ing and accuracy which command respect and confidence, he unites what
are not always to be found in union with these qualities., the no less valuable
faculties of lucid arrangement and graceful and facile expression."
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 41
Westcott (Dr. B. F.) — continued.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE
GOSPELS. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. los. (>d.
The author's chief object in this work has been to shew that there is
a true mean between the idea of a formal harmonization of the Gospels
and the abandonment of their absolute truth. After an Introduction on
the General Effects of the course of Modern Philosophy on the popular
views of Christianity^ he proceeds to determine in what way the principles
therein indicated may be applied to the study of the Gospels, The treatise
is divided into eight Chapters : — /. The Preparation for the Gospel. II
The Jewish Doctrine of the Messiah. III. The Origin of the Gospels,
IV. The Characteristics of the Gospels. V, The Gospel of St. John,
VI. and VII. The Differences in detail and of arrangement in the
Synoptic Evangelists. VIII. The Difficulties of the Gospels, The Ap-
pendices contain much valuable subsidiary matter,
A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE
CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DURING THE
FIRST FOUR CENTURIES. Third Edition, revised. Crown
8vo. loj. 6d.
The object of this treatise is to deal with the New Testament as a whole,
and that on purely historical grounds. The separate books of which it is
composed are considered not individually, but as claiming to be parts of the
apostolic heritage of Christians, The Author has thus endeavoured to con-
nect the history of the New Testament Canon with the growth and con-
solidation of the Catholic Church, and to point out the relation existing
between the amount of evidence for the authenticity of its component parts
and the whole mass of Christian literature. ^^The treatise" says the
British Quarterly, **w « scholarly performance, learned, dispassionate,
discriminating, worthy of his subject and of the present state oj Christian
literature in relation to it. "
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A Popular Account
of the Collection and Reception of the Holy Scriptures in the
Christian Churches. New Edition. i8mo. 4?. dd.
The present volume has been written under the impression that a
History of the whole Bible, and not of the New Testament only, would
be required, if those unfamiliar with the subject were to be enabled to learn
in what manner and with what consent the collection of Holy Scriptures
was first made and thht enlarged and finally closed by the Church,
Though the work is intended to be simple and popular in its method, the
author, for this very reason, has aimed at the strictest accuracy.
A GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE
ENGLISH BIBLE. Second Edition. Crown Svo. los. 6d.
In the Introduction the author notices briefly the earliest vernacular
versions of the Bible, especially those in Anglo-Saxon, Chapter I, is OC'
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42 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Westcott (Dr. B. Y .)— continued.
cupied with an account of the Manuscript English Bible from the 14th
century dmvnwards; and in Chapter IL is narrated, with many interest-
ing personal and other details^ the External History of the Printed Bible.
In Chapter III. is set forth tJu Internal History of the English Bible,
shelving to what extent the various English Translations were independent,
and to what extent the translators were indebted to earlier English and
foreign versions. In the Appendices, among other interesting and valuable
matter, will be found ^''Specimens of the Earlier and Later Wycliffite
Versions;^'' ^'■Chronological List of Bibles f^ *^An Examination of Mr.
Froudes History of the English Bible." The Pall Mall Gazette calls
the work **A brief, scholarly, and, to a great extent, an original contribu-
tion to theological literature. "
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, MANIFOLD AND ONE.
Six Sermons preached in Peterborough Cathedral. Crown 8vo.
7.S. 6d.
The Six Sermons contained in this volume are the first preached by
the author as a Canon of Peterborough Cathedral. The subjects are : —
/. ^'' Life consecrated by the Ascension.^ II. '•''Many Gifts, One Spirit.^''
Ill * ' The Gospel of the Resurrection. " IV. ' 'Sufficiency of God. " V.
*''' Action the Test of Faith." VI. ^^ Progress from the Confession of God."
The Nonconformist calls them '''■Beautiful discourses, singularly devoid
and tender. "
THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. Thoughts
on its Relation to Reason and History. Third Edition. Fcap.
8vo. 4J. 6</.
The present Essay is an endeavour to consider some of the elementary
truths of Christianity, as a miraculous Revelation, from the side of History
and Reason. The author endeavours to shezu that a devout belief in the
Life of Christ is quite compatible with a broad vieru of the course of human
p>r ogress and a frank trust in the laws of our awn minds. In the third
edition the author has carefully reconsidered the whole argument, and by
the help of several kind critics has been enabled to correct some faults and
to remove some ambiguities, which had been overlooked before. He has
not however made any attempt to alter the general character of the book.
ON THE RELIGIOUS OFFICE OF THE UNIVER-
SITIES. Crown 8vo. \s. 6d. ^
** There is certainly, no man of our time — no man at least who has ob-
tained the command of the public ear — whose utterances can compare with
those of Professor Westcott for largeness of views and comprehensiveness of
grasp There is wisdom, and truth, and thought enough, and a
harmony and mutual connection running through them all, which makes
the collection of more real value than many an ambitious treatise." —
Literary Churchman.
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THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 43
Wilkins.— THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. An Essay,
by A. S. Wilkins, M.A., Professor of Latin in Owens College,
Manchester. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 3^. (yd.
This is the Hulsean Prize Essay for 1869. The subject proposed by
the Trustees was, ''^ The Distinctive Eeatures of Christian as compared
with Pagan Ethics J^ The author has tried to sho7v that the Christian
ethics so far transcend the ethics of 'any or all of the Pagan systems in
method, in purity and in poiver, as to compel us to assume for them an
origin, differing in kind from the origin of any purely human system.
* It would be difficult to praise too highly the spirit, the burden, the con-
clusions, or the scholarly finish of this beautiful Essay." — British Quarterly
Review.
Wilson.— RELIGIO CHEMICL With a Vignette beauti-
fully engraved after a Design by Sir Noel Paton. By George
Wilson, M.D. Crown 8vo. %s.6d.
^^ George Wilson," says the Preface to this volume, " had it in his heart
for many years to write a book corresponding to the Religio Medici of Sir
Thomas Browne, with the title Religio Chemici. Severed of the Essays in
this volume were intended to form chapters of it, but the health and leisure
necessary to carry out his plans were never attainable, and thus fragments
only of the designed work exist. These fragments, however, being in most
cases like finished gems waiting to be set, some of them are now given in
a collected for^n to his friends and the public." — **^ mor» fascinating
volume," the Spectator says, ^^ has seldom fallen into our hands."
Wilson.— THE BIBLE STUDENTS GUIDE TO THE
MORE CORRECT UNDERSTANDING of the ENGLISH
TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, BY RE-
FERENCE TO THE ORIGINAL HEBREW. By William
Wilson, D.D., Canon of Winchester. Second Edition, carefully
revised. 4to. 25^.
** The author believes that the present work is the nearest approach to
a complete Concordance gf every word in the original thai has yet been
made: and as a Concordance, it may be found of great use to the Bible
student, while at the same time it serves the important object of furnishing
the means of comparing synonymous words, and of eliciting their precise
and distinctive meaning. The knowledge of the Hebrew language is not
absolutely necessary to the profitable use of the work. The plan of the
work is simple : every word occurring in the English Version is arranged
alphabetically, and under it is given the Hebrew word or words, with a
full explanation of their meaning, of which it is meant to be a translation,
and a complete list of the passages where it occurs. Following the general
work is a complete Hebrew and English Index, whi<:h is, in effect, a
Hebrew- English Dictiottary,
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44 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS.
Worship (The) of God and Fellowship among
Men. Sermons on Public Worship. By Professor Maurice,
and others. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d.
This volume consists of Six Sermons preached by various clergymen^
and cUthough not addressed specially to any class, were suggested by recent
efforts to bring the members of the Working Class to our Churches. The
preachers were — Professor Maurice, Rev. T. J. Rowsell, Rev. J. LI.
Davies, Rev. D. y. Vaughan.
Yonge (Charlotte M.)— SCRIPTURE READINGS for
SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES. By Charlotte M. Yonge,
Author of " The Heir of Redclyife." Globe 8vo. \s. (>d. With
Comments. 33-. 6d.
Second Series. From Joshua to Solomon. Extra fcap. 8vo.
is. 6d. With Comments, "^s. 6d.
Third Series. The Kings and Prophets. Extra fcap. 8vo.,
is. 6d.f with Comments, y.6d.
Actual need has led the author to endeavour to prepare a reading book
convenient for study with children, containing the very words of the
Bible, with only a few expedient omissions, and arranged in Lessons of
stuh length as by experience she has found to suit with children's ordinary
power of accurate attentive interest. The verse form has been retained be-
cause of its convenience for children reading in class, and as more re-
sembling their Bibles ; but the poetical portions have been given in their
lines. Professor Huxley at a meeting of the London School-board, par-
ticularly mentioned the Selection made by Miss Yonge, as an example of
how selections might be made for School reading. *^ Her Comments are
models of their kind.^' — Literary Churchman.
In crown 8vo. cloth extra, Illustrated, price 4?. 6d. each Volume ; also
kept in morocco and calf bindings at moderate prices, and in
Ornamental Boxes containing Four Vols., 21s. each.
MAGMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY.
A Series of Original Works by Eminent Authors.
The Guardian says — "^// Christian households owe a debt of gratitude
to Mr. Macmillanfor that useful * Sunday Library."^"
THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY :^
The Pupils of St. John the Divine. — By Charlotte
M. Yonge, Author of *'The Heir of Redclyffe."
The author first gives a full sketch of the life and work of the Apostle
himself, drawing the material from all the most trustworthy authorities,
sacred and profane ; then follow the lives of his immediate disciples, Ignatius,
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MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY. 45
QuadratuSy Polycarp^ and others; which arestuceeded by the lives of many
of their pupils. Sfie then proceeds to sketch from their foundation the
history of t/ie many churches planted or superintended by St. John and
his pupils^ both in the East and West. In the last chapter is given an
account of the present aspect of the Churches of St. John, — the Seven
Churches of Asia mentioned in Revelations ; also those of Athens, of
Ntmes, of Lyons, and others in the West. " Young and old will be
equally refreshed and taught by these pages, in which nothing is dull, and
nothing is far-fetched. " — Churchman.
The Hermits. — By Canon Kingsley.
The volume contains the lives of some of the most remarkable early
Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, and Western hermits. The lives are mostly
translations from the original biographies. ^^It is from first to last a
production full of interest, written with a liberal appreciation of what is
memorable for good in the lives of the Hermits, and with a wise forbear-
ance towards legends which may be due to the ignorance, and, no doubt,
also to the strong faith of the early chroniclers." — London Review.
Seekers after God. — Lives of Seneca, Epictetus, and
Marcus Aurelius. By the Rev. F. W. Farrar, M.A., F.R.S.,
Head Master of Marlborough College.
In this volume the author seeks to record the lives, and gives copious
samples of the almost Christ-like utterances of with perhaps the exception
of Socrates, " the best and holiest characters presented to us in the records
of antiquity." The volume contains portraits of Aurelius, Seneca, and
Antoninus Pius. *^We can heartily recommend it as healthy in tone,
instructive, interesting, mentally and spiritually stimulating and nu-
tritious. " — Nonconformist.
England's Antiphon. — By George Macdonald.
This volume deals chiefly with the lyric or song-form of English re-
ligious poetry, other kinds, however, being not infrequently introduced.
The author has sought to trace the course of our rdigious poetry from the
l^th to the igth centuries, from before Chaucer to Tennyson. He en-
deavours to accomplish his object by selecting the men who have produced
the finest religious poetry, setting forth the circumstances in which they
were placed, characterising the men themselves, critically estimating their
productions, and giving ample specimens of their best religious lyrics, and
quotations from larger poems, illustrating the religious feeling of the poets
or their times. *'^Dr. Macdonald has very successfully endeavoured to
bring together in his little book a whole series of the sweet singers of Eng-
land, and makes them raise^ one after the other, their voices in praise of
God, " — Guardian.
Great Christians of France : St. Louis and Calvin.
By M. GuizoT.
From among French Catholics, M. Guizot has, in this volume, selected
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46 MACMILLAISrS SUNDAY LIBRARY,
Louis ^ King of France in the I'^th century ^ and among Protestants^ Calvin
the Reformer in the i6th century, **as tiuo earnest and illustrious repre-
sentatives of the Christian faith and life, as well as of the loftiest thought
and purest morality of their country and generation" In setting forth
with considerable fulness the lives of these prominent and representative
Christian men, M. Guizot necessarily introduces much of the political and
religious history of the periods during which they lived, ^*A very interest-
ing book," says the Guardian.
Christian Singers of Germany. — By Catherine
WiNKWORTH.
In this volume the authoress gives an account of the principal hymn-
ivriters of Germany from the ^th to the l<)th century, introducing ample
specifnens from their best productions. In the translations, while the
English is perfectly idiomatic and harmonious, the characteristic differ-
ences of the poems have been carefully imitated, and the general style and
metre retained. ^^Miss IVinkworth^s volume of this series is, according to
our vieiu, the choicest production of her pen." — British Quarterly Review.
Apostles of Mediaeval Europe. — By the Rev. G. F.
Maclear, D.D., Head Master of King's College School, London.
In two Introductory Chapters the author notices some of the chief cha-
racteristics of the mediaeval period itself; gives a graphic sketch of the de-
vastated state of Europe at the beginning of that period, and an interesting
account of the religions of the three great groups of vigorous barbarians —
the Celts, the Teutons, and tlie Sclaves — who had, wave after wave, over-
flowed its surface. He then proceeds to sketch the lives and work of the
chief of the courageous men who devoted themselves to the stupendous task
of their conversion and civilization, during a period extending from the
^th to the 13M century; such as St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. Colum-
banus, St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Boniface, St. Olaf, St. Cyril,
Raymond Suit, and others. ^^ Mr. Maclear will have done a great work
if his admirable little volume shall help to break up the dense ignorance
which is still prevailing among people at large." — Literary Churchman.
Alfred the Great. — By Thomas Hughes, Author of " Tom
Brown's School Days." Third Edition.
** The time is come when we English can no longer stand by as in-
. terested spectators only, but in luhich every one of our institutions will be
sifted with rigour, and will have to shew cause for its existence. ....
As a help in this search, this life of the typical English King is here
offered." Besides other illustrations in the volume, a Map of England is
prefixed, shewing its divisions about 1000 A.D., as well as at the present
time. ''''Mr. Hughes has indeed written a good book, bright and readable
ive need hardly say, and of a very considerable historical value." —
Spectator.
Nations Around. — By Miss A. Keary.
This volume contains many details concerning the social and political
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MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY, 47
life, the religion, the superstitions, the literature, the architecture, the com-
merce, the industry, of the Nations around Palestine, an acquaintance with
which is necessary in order to a clear and full understanding of the history
of the Hebrew people. The authoress has brought to her aid all the most
recent investigations into the early history of these nations, referring fre-
quently to the fruitful excavations which have brought to light the ruins
and hieroglyphic writings of many of their buried cities. ^^Miss Keary
has skilfully availed herself of the opportunity to write a pleasing and in-
structive book.*^ — Guardian. *'^ valuable and interesting volume." —
Illustrated Times.
St. Anselm. — By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A., Dean
of St. Paul's. Second Edition.
In this biography of St. Anselm, while the story of his life as a man, a
Christian, a clergy Ttuin, and a politician, is told impartially and fully,
much light is shed on the ecclesiastical and political history of the time
during which he lived, and on the internal economy of the monastic estab-
lishments of the period. The author has drawn his materials from con-
temporary biographers and chroniclers, while at the same time he has
consulted the best recent authors who have treated of the man and his
time, *'*' It is a sketch by the hand of a master, with every line marked
by taste, learning, and real apprehension of the subject.''^ — Pall Mall
Gazette.
Francis of Assisi.— By Mrs. Oliphant.
The life of this saint, the founder of the Franciscan order, and one of
the most remarkable men of his time, illustrates some of the chief cha-
racteristics of the religious life of the Middle Ages. Much information is
given concerning the missionary labours of the saint and his companions,
as well as concerning the religious and monastic life of the time. Many
graphic details are introduced from the saint'' s contemporary biographers,
ivhich shew forth the prevalent belief s of the period ; and abundant samples
are given of St. Francises own sayings, as well as a fe%v specimens of his
simple tender hymns. ^^We ai-e grateful to Mrs. Oliphant for a book of
much interest and pathetic beauty, a book which none can read without
being the better for it." — John Bull.
Pioneers and Founders; or, Recent Workers in the
Mission Field. By Charlotte M. Yonge, Author of *'The
Heir of Redclyffe." With Frontispiece, and Vignette Portrait of
Bishop Heber.
The missionaries whose biographies are here given, are — John Eliot,
the Apostle of the Red Indians ; David Br ainerd, the Enthusiast ; Christ-
ian F. Schwartz, the Councillor of Tanjore; Hemy Martyn, the Scholar-
Missionary ; William Carey and Joshua Marshman, the Serarnpore Mis-
sionaries; the Judson Family; the Bishops of Calcutta, — Thomas
Middleton, Reginald Heber, Daniel Wilson; Samuel Mar sden, the Aus-
tralian Chaplain and Friend of the Maori ; John Williams, the Martyr
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48 MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY,
of Erromango; Allen Gardener^ the Sailor Martyr; Charles Frederick
Mackenzie^ the Martyr of Zambesi. ^^ Likely to be one of the most popular
of the * Sunday Library* volumes J* — Literary Churchman.
Angelique Arnauld, Abbess of Port Royal. By
Frances Martin. Crown 8vo. 4?. 6d.
This new volume of the ^Sunday Library* contains the life of a very
remarkable woman founded on the best authorities. She was a Roman
Catholic Abbess who lived more than 2(X) years ago, whose life contained
much struggle and suffering. But if we look beneath the surface^ we find
thai sublime virtues are associated with her errors, there is something
admirable in everything she does, and the study of her history leads to a
continual enlargement of our own range of thought and sympathy.
THE "BOOK OF PRAISE" HYMNAL,
COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY
LORD SELBORNE.
In the following four forms : —
A. Beautiftilly printed in Boyal 32nLo., limp cloth, price 6d.
B. „ „ Small 18mo., laxerer type, cloth limp, Is.
G. Same edition on fine paper, cloth, Is. 6d.
Also an edition with Music, selected, harmonized, and composed
by JOHN HULL A K, in square 18mo., cloth, 3s. 6d.
The large acceptance which has been given to ** The Book of Praise**
by all classes of Christian people encourages the Publishers in entertaining
the hope that this Hymnal, which is mainly selected from it, may be ex-
tensively used in Congregations, and in some degree at least meet the
desires of those who seek uniformity in common worship as a means
towards that unity which pi^us souls yearn after, and which our Lord
prayed for in behalf of his Church. ^^ The office of a hymn is not to
teach controversial Theology, but to give the voice of song to practical
religion. No doubt, to do this, it must embody sound doctrine ; but it
ought to do so, not after the manner of the schools, but with the breadth,
freedom, and simplicity of the Fountain-head. " On this principle has
Sir R. Palmer proceeded in the preparation of this book. .
The arrangement adopted is the following : —
Part I. consists of Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the
Creed — ^^God the Creator,** ''^Christ Incarnate,** ^'■Christ Crucified,**
^^ Christ Risen,** ^'Christ Ascended** '^ Christ* s Kingdom and Judg-
ment,** etc.
Part II. comprises Hymns arranged according to the subjects of tJie
Lord's Prayer.
Part III. Hymns for natural and sacred seasons.
There are 320 Hymns in all.
^/
CAMBRIDGE I — PRINTED BY J. PALMER,
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